Youth Offending Teams

Youth Offending Teams are there to help stop young people age 10 to 17 from committing crimes in the first place ,or to work to prevent further offending if you have been arrested. The teams have lots of different workers from Social Work, Health (both mental health and drugs/alcohol), Connexions, Education, Police and Probation. Most young people who are arrested and admit to an offence will be dealt with without going to court via a Reprimand, Final Warning, Fixed Penalty Notice or Youth Restorative Disposal and never get into trouble again – they may have to do something to show they regret the crime examples being - apologise to the victim or pay a fixed penalty Fine. In the case of a Final Warning the police from the YOT will assess whether there are other things in your life causing problems which if sorted out could help to stop you getting into further trouble, they will then see who might be best placed to help.

If you do go to Court then from December 09 you will be sentenced to a Youth Rehabilitation Order (YRO) which the youth court will make following the evidence and hearing from the YOT about the circumstances that led to the offence and what might be the best way of both punishing you and helping you not to offend again. In most cases you will have to agree to undertake some reparation work, to spend time talking about the consequences of your offences on both yourself and others, and see if there are other things that need work (such as school attendance or use of alcohol) to improve your prospects. If you get into further trouble you can get a second or maybe even third YRO but the demands on you will get higher until you could be spending 25 hours a week doing things for the YOT.

A very few young offenders fail to stop offending or commit a really serious offence and find themselves in custody. On release they will spend a period of time being supervised in the community by the YOT while they try to get “back on track”. What we find is that the younger young people are when they start to get into trouble the more likely they are to find it hard to stop. As a result there are staff in the YOT who can offer help before a young person has committed crime but where their behaviour is making the adults concerned this is going to happen. The YOT is particularly interested in helping Children in Care when this happens.