Saturday 28th April

What works to reduce offending

“About 200 offenders in Christchurch do 20% of crime and this is the group we need to target with programmes and services that work,” said Verna McFelin Chief Executive of PILLARS Inc, the organisation that provides services to children of prisoners and their families.

Kaye McLaren, researcher, author and one of New Zealand’s leading experts on “what works” to reduce offending, hosted a two day conference which was held by PILLARS in Christchurch yesterday and Thursday.

Kaye was invited to train community groups and Government department staff in effective approaches to reduce youth crime.

Kaye McLaren wrote Tough is Not Enough – Getting Smart about Youth Crime, a review of research on what works to reduce offending by young people, for the Ministry of Youth Affairs in 2000. This is used by Police, CYF and many others working with youth offenders.

Kaye also provided training in Youth Offending Services Effectiveness Checklist (YOSEC) which helps assess youth justice programmes to see how much of “what works” they do.

Verna McFelin, Chief Executive of PILLARS says the training proved very popular, with participants attending from as far north as Whakatane to Dunedin in the south. The conference was over-subscribed and there have already been a number of enquiries about when the next one will be held.

The conference was able to be staged through a generous grant from Internal Affairs Youth Worker Training Scheme which enabled community groups who could least afford to go, attend.

Feedback from participants was extremely positive. They said one of the most valuable things about the workshop was being able to use a checklist that provided them with evidenced based practice.

ENDS

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