6. What is the Welsh Government’s policy on youth justice? OAQ(5)0084(CC)

We believe that children and young people who are in the youth justice system should be treated as children first and offenders second. This is reflected in our joint strategy with the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. However, it was disappointing to read that a prison within my region has over 60 per cent of its 15 to 18-year-olds entering the prison with a drug-related issue. It was also highlighted that many of these teenagers will have spent time in the care system, truanted from school, or suffered with learning difficulties and/or mental health issues. With these indictors of vulnerability already highlighted, why is it that they were not supported sufficiently prior to entering prison, and have we already failed these teenagers once and, when they’re released from prison, unless we take action, they will be returned to the same environment and more likely to reoffend yet again? Cabinet Secretary, what systems do you have in place to support vulnerable young people to prevent them in the first place from entering the youth justice system, and what support has the Government, the Welsh Government, put in place to support young people leaving the prison in order to prevent the reoffending?

Well, there are two aspects to this. One is the prison side of things, which is a non-devolved function, but the fact is, for me, nothing hurts me more than to see young people incarcerated. It’s a failure of the system that we have. We must get beyond—. We must operate our services before we get into that space. That’s why we’re investing in the advanced case-management programme with the youth justice board. We’ve had some great success, where we’ve had four pilots running across Wales. Twenty of the most prolific reoffenders among young people have been stopped from reoffending because we’ve treated the symptoms of adverse childhood experiences. So, we’ve looked back at the drug and alcohol issues, family breakdowns, and we’re treating those, rather than saying, ‘You can’t reoffend.’ It doesn’t work at that end, we’ve got to get into the system early on, and that’s why we’re shifting our proposals into tackling economic well-being, giving people jobs, growth and skills—and you’ll get fed up of hearing me talk about this, but actually we’ve got to this and tackle the well-being aspect of ACEs, because that’s where we have to invest our finance to make sure children don’t get into the youth justice system.

Cabinet Secretary, can I ask you, in light of the UK Government’s recent publication of the Taylor review of youth justice, whether the Welsh Government intends to pursue greater influence over youth justice in Wales through the existing powers we have with regard to vulnerable children? So, for example, the last Welsh Government proposed the establishment of statutory reintegration and resettlement partnership under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, but we didn’t make it because of the time before running up to the Assembly elections. So, is it now time to put this back on the agenda and to explore other areas where, in Wales, we can do things differently and do things better?

Indeed, and I’m very familiar with that proposal and the Charlie Taylor review. I met with Dr Phillip Lee MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State only on Monday to talk about the Taylor review. We discussed there the issue around devolution. I think Charlie Taylor got it wrong in his observations. He talked about devolution in an English sense, not recognising that most of the services provided around youth justice are actually devolved already. So, health and social services are all functions of this Government or bodies that are related to this Government. I talked to Phillip Lee, and he was minded—he’s going to come to visit Wales to discuss the issues that are pertinent to us, but I think, ultimately, this should be part of the Wales Bill and should be devolved to us. We are doing a great job in managing young people and their aspirations for the future. It would be wrong to go backwards a step. To be fair to the Under-Secretary of State, he did agree with us in terms of that; he didn’t want to take a retrograde step, he wanted to work with us.

In response to the Taylor review just referred to, which was published on Monday, the review of youth justice, the measures announced by the UK Government include launching two secure schools, concentrating on English, maths and a range of work-training schemes to help reform and to help offenders find work on release. In February 2010, the Assembly’s Communities and Culture Committee produced a report, ‘Youth Justice: The experience of Welsh children in the Secure Estate’, recommending that the Welsh Government engage with the UK Government

‘towards enabling the development of new secure estate placements in Wales, using the Hillside secure unit in Neath as a model, and including the development of provision in an appropriate location in North Wales.’

Could you update us on what engagement, in the context of the Taylor review recommendations, has occurred?

Yes, thank you, and I’m sure the Member was listening to my response to Huw Irranca-Davies. We disagree with much of Charlie Taylor’s review. We will not be introducing secure schools here in Wales. I have visited the Hillside programme. I am looking at step-down facilities. From that, we do have Welsh solutions for these problems. I don’t think the secure school process is the right and appropriate way. We shouldn’t be incarcerating our young people; we should be supporting them upfront.