The first youth offenders in York and North Yorkshire to be dealt with under tough new measures could be electronically tagged from next week, the country's chief youth crime official revealed today (Monday, November 26).

Electronic tagging is being brought in as part of a £1.25m scheme in York and North Yorkshire featuring a 'carrot-and-stick' approach to deal with persistent young offenders.

The three year Intensive Supervision and Surveillance Programme is funded by the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales as part of a £45m national scheme.

And today, before a youth crime conference at the city's Royal York Hotel, Youth Justice Board chairman Lord Warner formally launched the York and North Yorkshire programme by overseeing a demonstration of some of the 'high-tech hardware' which will be used.

Lord Warner, a former top civil servant, said, "Intensive supervision is a powerful tool to curb the criminal activities of persistent offenders. For the first time courts have the option of a longer, tightly monitored, highly structured comprehensive alternative to custodial sentences.

"The programmes both protect the public and reform offending behaviour."

The cash, which was announced in June following a joint bid by York and North Yorkshire youth offending teams, will be spent on intensive supervision and surveillance in the community of the 'hard-core' of young offenders blamed for a large proportion of all local youth crime.

It will involve daily, one-to-one contact between young offenders and support workers as well as supervision measures such as electronic surveillance - including so-called 'tagging'.

The programme is backed by the city and county's key crime prevention agencies including North Yorkshire Police, the National Probation Service (North Yorkshire division), City of York Council, North Yorkshire County Council and North Yorkshire Health Authority.

Councillor Bob Scrase, City of York Council's executive member for community safety and local affairs, said, "This significant amount of Government money targeted on that small minority of very disruptive teenagers must make a difference for the better. "Since June some excellent work has gone on behind the scenes to use this money to best effect: now we can get on with the real job on the ground of working with these young people to stop their offending behaviour."

The York and North Yorkshire programme will aim to cut crime by this group by ten percent over the next three years, whereas the national target is five percent. Surveillance can be for up to 24-hours a day, seven days a week and include children and youths between the ages of ten and 17. The programme also includes reparation, training and education.

Peter Foulsham, manager of North Yorkshire Youth Offending Team, said that tackling crime in rural communities would be a key focus of the operation of the scheme in the county.

He said, "Having this intensive programme to work with North Yorkshire's most persistent young offenders is a real boost for our local communities.

"It is well recognised that the impact of crime can be dramatic, especially in small, rural communities, and we believe that the ISSP will make our towns and villages safer places to live in."

Today, York Youth Offending Team manager David Poole said the first youngsters would start on the programme in December. He said, "Since learning that we had made a successful bid for the money in June we have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to set up the ISSP for York.

"We are now ready to go and, while we aim to tailor programmes to the individual offender, some of the young offenders will be electronically tagged.

"This is an ambitious project that will be aimed at a small core of young offenders who commit the majority of youth crime and who have failed to respond to other support and activities to help them stop offending."

END