Children in Scarborough are almost twice as likely to become criminalised than elsewhere in the county.
The rate of children reoffending in Scarborough has been described as “troubling” by one of the areas' youth justice service leaders.
Steve Walker from North Yorkshire's youth justice service says 29.2% of all the children under its supervision were from the Scarborough town and Eastfield areas, despite the fact that Scarborough has only 16.7% of the county's ten to seventeen year olds.
The figure show that 35% of the Scarborough cohort are girls compared to the national rate of 15.8%.
Steve Walker from the youth justice service says children in Scarborough are almost twice as likely to become criminalised than elsewhere in the county.
The committee, which has previously raised concerns over rehabilitation and education offered to children at the region’s young offenders institutions, heard nine children from the county were handed custodial sentences over the last year and the service wanted to reduce that further.
Steve Walker said:
“We have never seen a child come out of custody better than they have gone in. It is, as the saying goes, an expensive way of making bad people worse.
“We want to further reduce the number of our children who are going into Wetherby Young Offenders Institution because it just isn’t an appropriate place for vulnerable and damaged children. It can’t offer therapeutic support or stability, it can’t offer the quality of education and care that they need.”
The meeting heard the youth justice service had launched a review to tackle “gaps and vulnerabilities” in communities across the county, to avert children reaching the criminal justice system.
Eastfield division councillor Tony Randerson described the youth justice report as “extremely disturbing”, saying little appeared to have changed at young offenders institutions.
He said:
“Generally, Scarborough has been the forgotten part of North Yorkshire. At the end of the day it’s about resources. If the resources aren’t there then things just aren’t going to improve.”
The meeting heard the review would include talking with youth justice colleagues in other seaside towns, such as Blackpool and Bridlington, but any service changes were unlikely to change the number of children becoming criminalised from Scarborough.
Mr Walker said:
“You have got to do something, even if it seems almost hopeless. I think we have pulled up the ladder too much and there are people down at the bottom of the system who are now finding it very hard to find a better life. We need to do more and Scarborough is a critical place for that due to the level of exclusion, but Catterick is there and there are little villages up in the Dales that get a bus a week. It’s not unique to Scarborough, it’s just particularly bad and visible in Scarborough.”
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