ABSTRACT
During recent years, there appears to have been an increase in anti-social behaviours amongst young people in our communities. The language used to describe young people is often highly derogatory and, at times, simply offensive. ‘Too many children are being put through the criminal justice system,’ according to a recent report by Children’s Commissioners. The Youth Justice Board’s Annual Youth Crime Survey, completed by MORI, shows that excluded young people are more than twice as likely to commit offences than children in mainstream school. In the current climate, if anti-social behaviour is to be successfully tackled then interventions should be implemented on a community level, across the range of services available to young people. Youth Offending Teams were first formulated as such a support mechanism in 1998.
