“Ten thousand more young people have been diverted from a life of crime” declared the Youth Justice Board (YJB) last November. How does it know? It counts what are called first-time entrants to the youth justice system – young first offenders, in plain English.

But it does so in a way that excludes almost 20,000 young people who misbehave sufficiently to be given on-the-spot fines for activities such as harassing or scaring people, being drunk and disorderly, destroying or damaging property, and petty shoplifting. These are offences in most people’s book – but not in that of the YJB.

Last November it reported that a total of 87,367 young people between the ages of 10 and 17 were convicted of crimes, reprimanded, or given final police warnings in 2007-08 - almost 10,000 fewer than in 2005-06, the baseline year for the YJB’s target of reducing first-time entrants by 5 per cent.

On the face of it, this was a first-class result, and that was exactly how the YJB treated it. “Our intervention programmes are having impact and saving thousands of youngsters from a life of crime” said Frances Done, Chair of the YJB. The target had been met – indeed, it had been comfortably exceeded.

Alas for her, a former YJB chair who resigned from the post in 2007, Professor Rod Morgan, was lying in wait. The claim was “smoke and mirrors” said Professor Morgan, because the figures exclude children issued with penalty notices for disorder (PNDs) – the devices used to treat minor offences and anti-social behaviour.

These penalty notices are, however, included when the Ministry of Justice counts up Offences Brought to Justice, its measure of how well the police and court system is functioning. Targets here, too, have been comfortably exceeded, in part because of a range of out-of-court measures are increasingly being used – warnings, conditional cautions, and PNDs.

So PNDs are counted when it suits the Ministry of Justice, and discounted when it doesn’t. What a convenient device they are!

In 2007-08 there were more than 19,000 PNDs issued to 16 and 17 year-olds, as well as an unreported number given to those aged 10 to 15 in six police areas where trials are in progress to test the use of PNDs on this younger age group.

PNDs include an £80 fine, but only about half of those issued with PNDs actually pay up, a written answer in the House of Lords on 27 April revealed. Non-payers are pursued through the courts for payment, but no figures exist to show how many finally pay.

Most of the teenagers issued with PNDs would have been new entrants to the system, since that is exactly the group PNDs are meant to target. If they had been included, it is pretty clear that the YJB’s target would not have been achieved at all. There might, indeed, have been an actual increase in first-time entrants to the youth justice system. “It does no credit to our criminal justice statistics to perpetrate smoke and mirror exercises of this nature” concludes Professor Morgan.

The Statistics Authority has no intention of letting the matter drop. Its Deputy Chair, Sir Roger Jowell, wrote to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, expressing concern over “whether the public and policy makers are getting appropriate and coherent information on the incidence of youth crime and how it is dealt with by the justice system.”   

He suggested a meeting under the chairmanship of the National Statistician to work out how to ensure the government delivers a clear set of statistical information that meets the needs of users, with a view to reporting back to the authority in May. Sir Suma agreed.

The authority has powers and obligations to report on matters of public concern relating to official statistics, he reminds Sir Suma. But as a none-too-subtle inducement to get on with it, he says the authority will not prepare a report on the issue until the meeting has taken place.

What the authority wants to see is PNDs included as bone-fide offences for new entrants, which would blow a hole in the YJB’s targets.

Something has to give. Are they offences or are they not? The Government can't have it both ways.