there's talk, ahead of the government's youth crime action plan, of stripping the YJB of its £279 million custody budget and giving it to children's services instead. could councils do any better in providing for young offenders? has the YJB had its day?

I work in youth justice and I feel that local councils having control would most likely be a good thing.

To me it feels like the YJB are too centralised and distant.  At a recent inspection of my team the inspectors knew nothing about the local area that we work in or about the other services that are available to support us.  The crime problems facing each area differs, for example some areas are far more likely to have problems with gun crime and gangs, which isn't really a problem where I work, but acquisitive crime such as pickpocketing and street robberies are prevalent most likely due tome working in a large seaside tourist town.

The youth justice action plan has now been published and hasn't gone down the expected route of giving councils control of the budget for detaining young people. Do people see this  as a missed opportunity for policies to perhaps have become more welfare focused?

From what we've found, it seems that directors of children's services were pretty much opposed to the move, Andrew Webb, the Association of Directors of Children's Services youth justice lead, describing it as a "simplistic solution to a complex problem". Their opposition would have made it hard to transfer the budget, while the action plan appeared rather taken over by the knife crime issue, which was reaching fever pitch at around the time of publication. Anything that smacked too much of a welfarist approach was always liable to bite the dust.