NI agencies working together to fight anti-social behaviour

Shared intelligence and partnership working are vital to crackdown on anti-social behaviour in young people in the North, a conference heard today.

Professor Rod Morgan, chairman of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales, said police were working with schools, social services and youth workers in a way that would not have seemed possible a decade ago.

He told the Association of Chief Police Officers event in Belfast that the sensitive subject presented a number of challenges.

Prof. Morgan said: “There is general agreement that all recorded crime has fallen throughout the British Isles since the 1990s.

“The public at large are suspicious about that. To be frank, they don’t believe it.

“The reason they don’t believe it is that they perceive there to be much more disorder in public life.

“Quite a lot of our focus is not on crime but on anti-social behaviour and working much more closely, not just with young people, but with their parents, the schools and other groups where we are not working as well as we should be.”

Prof. Morgan said a small number of young people are prolific offenders and called for that group to be targeted as a priority.

On the significance of the conference, Prof. Morgan said: “Fifteen years ago the idea of police sharing intelligence with schools, youth workers and social services would have been anathema.

“But now it is routine and that is a huge sea change.”

Among the international speakers was a German expert who described the youth justice system in his country, where the age of criminal responsibility is 14, as opposed to 10 in the UK.

More than 200 delegates from across Europe and as far afield as Australia are in Belfast for the two-day event at the Europa Hotel.

Other issues on the conference agenda include drugs in schools, young people and weapons and neighbourhood policing.