To ask Her Majesty's Government upon what evidence the Youth Justice Board based its decision to alter the asset scores in the three bands of the framework for assessing intervention levels in the Scaled Approach from 0–25, 26–41 and 42–64 in the September 2008 draft to 0–14, 15–32, and 33–64 in the February 2009 draft. [HL2587]

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) has advised that it based the decision to alter these bandings on the YJB Asset research (2003) which provided reconviction rates for children and young people falling within the different bands. It also took into account the concerns and experience of the youth offending teams piloting the scaled approach.

As a result it was clear that what was the low band in the model published in September 2008 would in practice contain children and young people who could not be considered as being of low likelihood of reoffending according to the research data. This was considered to be unacceptable as it would undermine public confidence and that of the courts, so the decision was made to amend the model.

The revised model, published in February 2009 on the YJB website, is now consistent with the research and the experience and advice of the pilot sites and will ensure that children and young people will be receiving levels of supervision commensurate with their assessed likelihood of reoffending.

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment the Ministry of Justice has made of the impact of changing the asset scores in the three bands of the framework for assessing intervention levels in the Scaled Approach. [HL2588]

The scaled approach is a new risk-based assessment tool developed by the Youth Justice Board which it is piloting and it is its responsibility to assess its impact.

The YJB has advised that the impact of changing the asset scores for the three bands in the new model will result in an increase in the numbers of young offenders falling into the medium and enhanced bands and a decrease in the numbers in the low band from that of the previous model. This change impacts on the workload of youth offending teams with the earlier model resulting in a significant fall in workload and the revised model having no discernible increase in contact requirements to those presently required.

Model 1 (September 2008)

Low—63 per cent;

Medium—33 per cent; and

High—4 per cent.

Revised Model

Standard (formerly low)—21 per cent;

Enhanced (formerly medium)—69 per cent; and

Intensive (formerly high)—10 per cent.