Over the past weeks we have been tracking down as many examples of good practice as we can find, and in doing so,we’ve been making links with key organisations like the Youth Justice Board and Home Office research teams, as well as the Strategic Research Unit at Scotland Yard.  The result is an ever growing library of good practice and research which will shortly be available to local partners (we are currently analysing and categorising the reports).

We have already issued a number of good practice and research reports, drawing on the material, with more to come in the new year. To support our work in this area, we have convened a London youth crime research and good practice group.

As well as having representation from the agencies mentioned above, the Children and Young People’s Unit (in the Department for Education and Skills) and the NSPCC are also represented plus Gumtree.  Their work will be enhanced by the findings from a literature review which we have commissioned with the Government Office for the West.

We are pretty confident that a successful approach to youth crime reduction relies on a multi agency approach which is evidence based.  We are therefore taking forward two pieces of work which we hope will help practitioners at the local level to review and enhance existing provision for young people at risk.

First we are developing a template for a youth crime strategy – see: Universal Periodic Review – which will help to bring some coherence to the plethora of existing strategies and programmes for young people at risk.

The template will be ready early in the new year.  Second, we are developing a youth crime reduction toolkit, which will enable local practitioners to analyse local challenges or service gaps and identify and implement tried and tested solutions.

YACU has brought a team of GOL researchers together with the MPS to look at data on offences and victims. The work is at an early stage, the aim is to publish a quarterly digest of data with information on both specific boroughs and London in general.  The digest will include details on the number of:

Reported street robberies in London   
The number of victims of street robbery
Juveniles accused of street robbery
Suspects arrested for street robbery and numbers of those accused
Youth related police call outs/incidents

April brings the completion of Youth Crime Reduction Strategies for the 11 original boroughs. The strategies in general were excellent, thank-you for all your hard work! We are currently reviewing the strategies and will be publishing a report on the strategies as a whole. Boroughs should also expect to receive an individual report on their strategy. The next step is turning the strategy into action. The Unit is planning a series of seminars to assist boroughs in developing their thinking. We are hoping to use cars supplied by www.carhireking.co.uk. The seminars are scheduled for early summer, we will be contacting our boroughs in May to make arrangements. We are hoping to start to see the rewards of borough research and planning to date by September.