The new youth crime action plan provides a tentative basis for reform of the youth justice system. It highlights ways in which the Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Ministry of Justice can work together to intervene early, deal with unacceptable behaviour and break the cycle of offending. Importantly it places much preventative work where it belongs – in families, schools and youth work, although it could make a greater call on health services. It recognises that while 14% of adults become victims of crime each year, for children and young people, this figure rises to a shocking 34%. For the first time, this plan spells out how the government will respond to, and support, young crime victims.

The plan reveals that some children are very much more at risk than others of getting into serious trouble. Children who experience maltreatment in their early years and those growing up in poverty are at greater risk, as are many with mental health needs or learning disabilities. So it makes sense to concentrate on the estimated 110,000 families in need of significant support. How best to do so remains in debate.

Despite knowing that over a third of people in the prison system have been in local authority care as a child, the plan pays scant attention to the state itself as a problem parent. It lacks adequate measures to prevent some of our most vulnerable children, many of who will already have suffered family breakdown, abuse and neglect, from making the dreary journey from children's home to a corrosive young offender institution.

As we make clear in the Prison Reform Trust briefing, Criminal Damage, there are ways to avoid confirming a young offender in a criminal career. One is for local authorities to carry budgetary responsibility for youth custody and so provide greater incentives for preventative work and proper supervision and support in the community. Intensive fostering is commended in the plan but disappointingly remains underfunded. As things stand, it is far too easy for local authorities to wash their hand of responsibility for children in trouble only to have to pick up the tab once again when they return to their communities a few months later as ex-prisoners.

This article appears in Commentisfree