“MUG a hoodie!” declared the Mail on Sunday recently as it set the scene for a get-tough speech by David Cameron on the prison system and offending. The reference is of course an inversion of “Hug a hoodie” – the famous headline attributed to the Prime Minister when, in 2006, he suggested a more understanding attitude to our troubled young people. Mugging or hugging hoodies – both are sharp hooks which will get coverage. But as councils know, behind the headlines, criminal behaviour is generally the product of a complex pattern of local factors. Housing, school exclusion, employment, leisure facilities – all of these mesh to produce the tough estates and problem areas that all local authorities contend with.Criminals do not enter the world fully formed; they are a product of their environment and upbringing. It’s therefore important to look at families as a whole in responding to criminality and cutting reoffending as the central government’s recent troubled families initiative acknowledges.Westminster and the other Tri Borough authorities have their own share of deprivation and social challenges. So it was logical to put a focus on helping families at the centre of our Community Budget proposals. This started from the pioneering and often imitated Westminster Family Recovery Programme (FRP), launched in 2008. This has gone on to form the blueprint for family intervention work in many other local authorities and also influenced the national programme.The FRP has the aim of supporting local families with complex needs and who might be at risk of reoffending by forming a team of specialists around the family to reflect each family’s circumstances. The programme isn’t cheap - each family on it costs about £19,500 a year - but we know it works. In a study of families where crime and disorder were a major concern, the average number of ‘suspected offences’ they were involved in fell from nine in the year before FRP intervention to just one and a half afterwards. The scheme has also resulted in reduced numbers of families with rent arrears, improved health and reduced incidents of anti-social behaviour. It has also arguably improved the quality of life for residents in the surrounding neighbourhood. What’s more, Westminster calculates that for every £1 it spends on a family in the scheme, £2.10 is saved from the public purse in the form of avoided costs.The Community Budget proposal just submitted takes this on by developing the Westminster service into a Tri Borough model with a “Stronger Families” proposal which will set up a ‘triage’ and key worker arrangement for families who need help below the intensive level delivered by FRP. But to make this work it requires all the relevant central and local government agencies to pool funds to create the service and then benefit from the outcomes in terms of less crime, more people in work and fewer benefits paid. We also make curbing adult reoffending one of the key proposals within the Community Budgets proposal. Under this part of the plan, we will channel more resources into the rehabilitation of offenders sentenced to short prison terms of less than 12 months, because both the national and local picture shows that short-term prisoners are disproportionately more likely to reoffend. Troubled families and young people veering into criminality are problems for all councils. At Westminster we don’t claim to have a panacea, but we have hopefully made useful inroads into addressing this complex issue. We look forward to the response from government.
