Northampton Youth Offending Service review panel evaluation

This report is the result of a brief pilot evaluation of the ‘Youth Order Review’ panels set up by the Northampton Youth Offending Service (NYOS) in conjunction with youth court magistrates. The evaluation took place over a nine month period between November 2014 and July 2015. The panels were set up to trial a model of service delivery designed to give a motivational push to a young person serving time on a Youth Rehabilitation Order (YRO). Specifically identified young people are drawn in and communicated with in an informal and supportive way in the hope of achieving improved outcomes and successful completion of their Orders. This is alongside addressing the wider social and lifestyle factors that might be impacting upon their engagement. An additional goal of the panels was to test the approach of involving youth court magistrates in a young person’s rehabilitation and correction pathway. This draws on the principle of ‘sentencer supervision’ as applied in the problem-solving court model. From this brief evaluation the Youth Order Review panels are appraised as a positive intervention that could be more widely implemented across youth justice services.