An increasing number of young offenders are being put through community programmes to help their rehabilitation.

In the past three months the community service programme has seen a rise in teenage participants as magistrates look to impose more unpaid work orders instead of fines. Meanwhile there has been a 25 per cent increase in the number of offenders taking part in the wide range of other community programmes offered by Court Services.

Psychiatrist Gemma Harris coordinates the community rehabilitation programmes, which include violent offender, sex offender, anger management and cognitive behaviour courses, offered to those on probation or parole.

“There seem to be more acquisitive offences, perhaps because people are struggling with employment,” Dr Harris told The Royal Gazette.

“Traditionally the programmes target the thinking around the offending and we look at offending in the wider context of the offender’s needs. The numbers of people on these programmes has increasing significantly and we are offering more programmes. We have seen an increase of 25 to 30 per cent year on year.”

Dr Harris and her team of three coordinate both group and one-on-one programmes, and now conduct intensive personal assessments on individuals referred to programmes.

“The team has also had four years of experience now and is more skilled and better at delivering tailored services to the individual.

“The gang issues are a challenge for us; there are people that we are struggling to service because they can not make it to town safely.

“One thing we have seen a lot of is young clients around the 16, 17 and 18 age group and we have had to run more programmes targeted at the young.”

Team leader Kelly Madeiros, who co-ordinates the community service programme, told this newspaper her team had also noticed an increase in young offenders given sentences with an unpaid work requirement.

“At the moment we get a lot of traffic offenders, who instead of being given fines are being given community service orders,” she added.

“People don’t have money to pay fines so community service is an alternative. Over the last four months we have therefore dealt with more young people and students.”

Ms Madeiros said her team did their best to match offenders with work placements tailored to their career aspirations.

She added: “There are more in depth interviews where we try and identify the issues that bring young people into the system and try to connect them with resources that re-motivate them and that they might not otherwise know about.

“We recently partnered with the Bermuda Cricket Board to help people re-engage with what they want to do and we have also placed someone who was interested in nursing with the St John Ambulance.

“There is another big project ongoing from that partnership with the BCB which could develop into an even bigger community partnership, and that could be huge.”