By Penelope Gibbs, Prison Reform Trust
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Or at least has greater influence over the tune. If local authorities paid for child custody, they would surely gain more control over where children are placed and the quality of regimes. And have a greater incentive to stop children being imprisoned. The government's new Youth Crime Action Plan has flirted with the idea of delegating the custody budget but not championed it. It proposes making the costs of custody more visible to inform debate "on whether, in the long term, local authorities should be responsible for the placement and funding of custodial placements".
I don't know why the idea didn't get further. Maybe because local authorities were only willing to pay if they also commissioned, and that would involve a huge shrinking of the Youth Justice Board.
Councils paying up
In one small area they are proposing in make local authorities pay. In the case of court-ordered secure remand, local authorities are already billed one-third of the cost of the custodial placement. The plan proposes that they should pay the whole cost. So far so good. But it doesn't say local authorities will get extra funding to cover it. So I can guess what their response will be.
There may also be a potential problem in focusing on
one of several types of remand. The youth offending team officer recommends a
particular type of remand to the court. If they know that their authority will
have to pay for one type of remand, they may tailor their recommendations
accordingly. If local authorities had to pay for all custodial remand, this
problem could be avoided.
More responsibility
The Youth Crime Action Plan wrestles with how to get local authorities to take on more responsibility for children in the youth justice system. They will focus on areas "that do not have adequate systems in place to improve the outcomes for children and young people or where outcomes fail to improve".
But quite how such areas will be improved is not clear. The fact is that the most powerful means of influencing local authorities - local area agreements - were negotiated in a separate process. And no local authority chose to prioritise reducing the number of children sentenced to custody or to increase young offenders' access to suitable accommodation.
Tough goals
While local authorities perceive these goals as very difficult to achieve, I'm afraid no amount of cajoling from the centre will change their behaviour. They want more resources and more control.
More information
Youth Crime Action Plan: councils gain training and education budget
Penelope Gibbs, director of the Prison Reform Trust's strategy to reduce child and youth imprisonment