Community Safety in South-east Wales

Part of Questions to the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 2:39 pm on 18 June 2019.

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Photo of Jane Hutt Jane Hutt Labour 2:39, 18 June 2019

I'd like to thank Jayne Bryant for that question. I'm very grateful that she shared the video, Anti Social Bob, produced by Newport youth offending service, and it's a video that was developed with young people at its heart. It does actually show the real cost of anti-social behaviour, not just to the young person but the wider impacts on family, friends and communities. We know that using media can have such an impact and is a powerful way of educating. It also helps to divert young people from those behaviours, which can easily lead to criminalisation and long-term impacts of such behaviour. I know that youth offending teams across Wales meet regularly and they will be looking at this as an example of good practice. But what is key, I think, in terms of protecting our youth services, and that obviously is something where we're supporting our local authorities closely, but also in terms of youth justice, we have seen the achievement of the lowest numbers of young people from Wales in custody, and work is under way to improve this even further with the blueprint for youth justice that I published on 21 May.