How tech keeps young offenders on straight and narrow

A £26m revamp of youth justice tech promises to cut the risk of self-harm and reoffending among young inmates.

The transformation, which began in April 2007, has already allowed close to 30,000 workers within the justice system and private sector to share care and risk management information on young offenders in England and Wales via secure email.

Mike Mackay, CIO for the Youth Justice Board, said the new system marks a massive step forward from previously relying on faxes, phone calls and secure courier delivery to share the information between youth offending teams (YOTs), the courts, the police, private companies and young offenders institutes (YOIs).

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The system enables YOTs to rapidly advise the courts on which institution will best suit a young offender and allows the courts to notify the institution, which can then plan the offender's stay in custody.

Mackay told silicon.com: "Before, this kind of information often wasn't getting through until the last moment."

"I spoke to a governor at Ashfield YOI and she said the main problems were that 'I don't know who I am getting, when I get them and I don't know where they are going when they go'.

"She said that these systems have transformed the game for her: they get this real time information about who is coming in, for example, when they had their last heroin fix, whether they are homophobic, etc. She knows all of these things before [offenders] come through their gate."

With better access to information, governors can plan out an offender's first night - often a very dangerous night for a new inmate - as well as planning out the rest of their sentence.

"We are able to manage risk better so there is lower risks of harm and self-harm and able to plan out the sentence so there is a much better fit for the needs of the young people," he added.

As well as enabling staff to better oversee offenders' stays, the time spent on admin is also reduced.

"The key benefits are things like not typing in data three or four times, not faxing people multiple times and not reassessing people who have already been assessed," Mackay said.

The secure email system relies on AEP Networks 128-bit encryption boxes fitted within the 200 disparate networks throughout the central government bodies, local authority groups and private companies that handle young offenders.

Mackay said: "The AEP Networks system allows us to manage all devices remotely, therefore keeping maintenance costs low while ensuring the integrity of the network for all 200 unconnected networks."

By the end of March this year, the IT transformation project will also see a risk assessment application deployed to almost all of the young offenders institutes in England and Wales and the introduction of a national information management tool to provide organisations such as the police and courts with information on youth offending trends and hotspots. The six main case and risk management applications within the core organisations in the youth justice system will also be upgraded, to allow them to share information using XML schemas.