Lewisham has experienced a drop in youth re-offending including a 50 per cent drop in youth custodial sentences, experts say.

Lewisham’s Youth Offending Service (YOS) service manager Keith Cohen said the borough had moved from a high-custody borough to a relatively low-custody borough.

Speaking at Safer Lewisham Partnership meeting, he said youths who were given custodial sentences were more likely to re-offend.

“We all know the impact in terms of increased trauma, and the increased likelihood to re-offend and the impact on the public of young people who end up in custody to come out even worse,” he told the partnership.

“We believe we are seeing reductions in re-offending particularly around use of custody for young people.

“We have had a 50 per cent reduction in youth in custody. We were a high-custody borough and now we can start to be able to call ourselves a reasonably-low custody borough,” he said.

Lewisham had the 10th highest rate of youth re-offending in London earlier this year.

A court can give a young person a custodial sentence if the crime is so serious there is no other suitable option, the young person has committed crimes before, or the judge or magistrate thinks the young person is a risk to the public.

A young person can also be sent to custody on remand.

Mr Cohen also outlined the service’s improvement plan.

This follows from a 2016 inspection which graded the service as unsatisfactory in a number of categories, including protecting children and young people and reducing reoffending.

He said the YOS has achieved “greater stability” through hiring full-time staff instead of agency workers, and had far greater data and analytical capacity.

“We are now able to keep a track of re-offending and characteristics that young people are presenting in terms of seriousness,” he said.

He said the YOS had reviewed their plan and were focussing on engaging parents.