Youth Justice Agency of Northern Ireland

Progress

From 1 December 2006, Youth Conferencing operates in all court areas ofNorthern Ireland after a staged rollout begun in December 2003.
The Youth Conference Order is now the predominant disposal in the youth court.
Since its introduction in December 2003 through to January 2008, there have been 1,558 diversionary conference referrals and 2,114 court-ordered referrals.

The number of referrals has continued to rise with the rollout of the Service. The number of referrals received in the first 10 months of 2007/08 (1,649) is already well in excess of the total referrals for 2006/07 (1,298).
Victim attendance at conferences remains very high – from 2003 to date 63%of conferences have had a victim, or a victim representative, present.
Satisfaction levels of both young offenders and victims remains high. During the first 10 months of 2007/08, 91% of victims would recommend the conference to another victim and 93% of young offenders were satisfied with the outcome of the conference.
77% of young people showed some degree of shame; 9 out of 10 young people expressed remorse to the victim.
Since the Youth Conference Service was established in December 2003 over 15,000 people have attended a conference (this includes members of the public, community representatives, police, parents, social workers, business community, etc).
Youth Conferencing has now been refined and developed to the point where independent evaluation and international experts now regard it as a world leader in addressing, in a balanced way, youth crime, the concerns of victims and the safety of communities.
The Youth Conference Service has recently been inspected by the Criminal Justice Inspectorate. The report is available on the Youth Justice Agency website