Justice 2 Committee, 14 Dec 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Official Report 149KB pdf

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Youth Justice

Agenda item 4 is our youth justice inquiry. Members have been away on fact-finding visits to Dundee, Falkirk and South Lanarkshire, and papers have been circulated. It might be helpful to start with the Dundee visit, but I cannot remember who went on it.

I did.

Obviously, the committee has the report, but members might find it helpful if you briefly commented on the principal matters that emerged from the visit.

I will make some brief comments.

I am grateful to Marlyn Glen, who is a member of the Justice 1 Committee, for coming on the visit. The people of Dundee put in a huge amount of effort and I would have felt guilty if the clerk—Anne Peat—and I had been the only two people there. I am also grateful to Anne Peat for coming all the way to Dundee and for putting together the report.

When we go on such visits in future, I suggest that there should not be as many people in each group that we meet. The group at the end consisted of such a wide range of people that it was difficult to get any serious information from them, as everyone wanted to have their say. However, good things came out of the meeting that was held immediately after lunch. Tayside fire brigade made interesting comments about what it is doing to encourage youngsters to get involved with the brigade in order to keep them out of mischief.

However, I suppose that the biggest issue that arose from the visit was the fast-track hearings system in Dundee. That comes out in the report. Dundee is one of the pilot areas and people are keen to find out whether the pilot will continue—I think that it will come to an end in March—and whether there would be more funding, as they were thinking about moving on, for example. I know that Marlyn Glen has spoken to the minister and she is now speaking to people in Dundee—Derek Aitken in particular—to try to get information back to the Executive.

The visit was good and many other issues came out of it. The session on the victims of youth crime—VOYCE—project was interesting. I often receive complaints from my constituents that matters are reported to the police and that is the last that they hear about them. It is clear that that is not happening in Dundee. People are being involved. That is a good idea from which perhaps lessons could be learned elsewhere.

Thank you for that helpful report, Mike. I understand that Bill Butler went to Falkirk.

Yes. I was told to go to Falkirk and I went.

Are you sure that it was Falkirk?

I am absolutely certain that it was Falkirk, Mr Fox.

I am grateful to Tracey Hawe and Frazer McCallum who not only accompanied me but provided great assistance in advance by undertaking the preparations for the visit. They arranged our meetings with the people in Falkirk who are trying to fashion a youth justice strategy that will meet the needs of young people in Falkirk and the surrounding areas.

As members will see from our report, Falkirk Council runs a multidisciplinary youth justice referral group, one of the good results of which is that referrals are now collated within seven days. The group enables information sharing among the various agencies, which means that the way in which young people are dealt with is as effective as possible. Its aim is to address the problems that the young people manifest and the problems that arise for the community.

On page 2 of our report, we have set out the various challenges that the group faces in future. The fact that it plans to continue to work in a multidisciplinary manner is good, as an integrated approach is the way ahead for youth justice. We spoke to a large number of the people who are involved in youth justice in the Falkirk area and that message came over clearly. Although it was interesting to meet so many people, as Mike Pringle said, it was difficult to engage fully with everybody we met. That said, the experience was positive.

We heard about some short-term funding issues that have to be resolved. The idea of securing long-term—or longer-term—funding is important to the people we met, as it will ensure that the approach that they are taking is as effective as possible. I will not go through all the bullet points that are listed on page 2, as members will have done so, or can do so, for themselves. The visit was worthwhile. I was glad to go to Falkirk and I am glad to report our findings from Falkirk.

Thank you, Bill. I will ask Jackie Baillie to report on the final visit that she and I undertook to Hamilton. After she gives her report, I will take questions from members on the various visits.

As I do not have a copy of our report in front of me, I will be quick. The convener is kindly offering to pass me a copy, but I am fine without it—I will just wing it.

I echo the thanks that members have given the clerks. Without their input, we would not have captured the essence of the visit. I also echo the comments that other members made about the number of people we met—there were just too many people to make our visit meaningful. We were introduced to virtually every member of the partnership and, although that was helpful, everyone had different contributions to make. Perhaps we could have undertaken the visit in a slightly different manner.

That said, I found Hamilton youth court incredibly interesting. It is staffed with committed people and offers a clear focus and link between the police, council and court. Things move quickly through the system, although that might be because of the pilot nature of the court with all the additional resources that are thrown at it. We picked up that there may be issues around displacement activity, with social workers and children's panel members feeling the pressure of social work attention being focused on the youth court. That had implications, as there were not sufficient staff to focus on both the youth court and children's hearings. I asked whether education services are fully involved in the partnership and whether those services feel that they have a proper role to play. The question was not properly answered, however.

As with everything, I did not come away with a sense of, "Ah—this is what works." A lot of the indications were that it is too early to judge on the basis of outcomes whether the youth court in particular is working yet. Our initial impressions are very positive, but there will have to be a bit of wait and see.

Thank you, Jackie. I have nothing to add to the report. It has been helpful to get a résumé of the main points that emerged from our visits.

As no members have questions about the visits, we will proceed to the next agenda item, which we have agreed to take in private.

Meeting continued in private until 15:38.