|
 Introduction
Since the establishment of the Youth Justice Strategy Group
in 2001 considerable progress has been made in both expanding
services and developing close partnerships to tackle youth
crime. These initiatives have included the completion of
the Fast Track Children’s Hearing Pilot across Ayrshire,
which was implemented by a multi agency partnership group
led by the three local authorities. More recently the introduction
of the Anti Social Behaviour Act has seen the creation of
more new initiatives with which we have joined forces and
are working together to tackle youth crime in South Ayrshire.
Although there are small pockets within South Ayrshire
where youth crime is a real concern to communities, overall
the position is reasonably good, for example, across six
offences commonly committed by young people the South Ayrshire
rate of offending is well below the Scottish average. A likely
explanation for this is the range of good quality statutory
and voluntary services, which are provided by a whole range
of organisations within the area. The Youth Justice Strategy
Group’s contribution has largely been aimed at tackling
youth offending at the higher persistent offender level.
Again within South Ayrshire the numbers of young people who
fall into this category are relatively small. In 2004 there
were 31 young people who met the persistent offender criteria.
The target for the youth justice strategy team is to reduce
this number by 10% by 2006. We are attempting to achieve
this in partnership with other statutory agencies such as
Strathclyde Police and the Scottish
Children’s Reporter Administration Agency
and with a range of other statutory and voluntary organisations
that we refer to within the body of this document. At a time
when offence reports across Scotland are increasing this
is a challenging target and I would express my gratitude
to all those agencies that have signed up to work towards
it with us.
Finally, this Plan has been prepared in a rapidly changing
environment. It sets out the priority developments we require
to put in place to address youth offending in South Ayrshire,
but may be subject to alteration if we have to respond to
changing circumstances, which were not predicted.
NEIL WATSON
Chair
South Ayrshire Council
Youth Justice Strategic Group
 South Ayrshire Youth Justice Strategy (1460KB)
|
