With youth crime rising all over the country, the Government decided to take radical measures to stop ten to 17-year-olds from re-offending - and they chose Oxford as the place to pilot the innovative scheme, writes Katherine MacAlister.

If successful, the Youth Offending Team will be copied nationwide in new legislation expected next year. Maggie Blyth is the service manager given the responsibility of getting the ball rolling.

"We are essentially nipping young offending in the bud," she explains. "We are trying to get young people to take responsibility very quickly for what they have done and fast-track information between the agencies."

The service was established in April to reduce youth crime and establish a profile of offences in Oxfordshire. Young people will now have an assessment as soon as they are arrested.

"We have an action plan where each offender is evaluated and asked about drugs, home, education and problems and then given specified goals to change their behaviour.

"We aim to catch an offender very early in his or her criminal life, regardless of whether it is a final warning or a prison sentence.

An intervention programme is then drawn up to try to stop that youngster from re-offending. If, however, that person still re-offends, a tougher penalty will be imposed.

There is also fast-tracking to the courts for first-time offenders who are then sent to youth offender panels made up of people from Oxfordshire communities. "It is a double-edged sword. If they do not offend again they have a lot of support, but if they do not respond, the sting is tougher sentences," Ms Blyth says.

Truancy from school, or a lack of education, is an important factor in re-offending, so the service is liaising closely with the education department to try to rectify this. Offenders rarely think of the victim or the consequences of their crimes, so the team has also organised a scheme where the victim explains their reaction to the offender and listens to the reasons why the crime was committed.

Some of the offenders suffer from little adult supervision in their lives, so the team has organised parenting classes to give people advice about their offending children, and a mentoring programme where an adult shadows them and gives the offender someone to listen to and pay attention to them.

Sixty young offenders have so far been befriended by mentors and another 30 are waiting for volunteers. Other projects include anger control management and Trax, a scheme to get children interested in building, maintaining and running cars.

Another breakthrough has been the co-operation between the numerous agencies who used to deal with youth problems separately, and often inefficiently. They now work together.

The team is also trying to build up links with offenders in jail so that they have somewhere to go, live and work when they are released.

"We are trying to provide a link between the community and outside, whether it be employment, school or drug rehabilitation."

The youth offending team has got three units in Oxfordshire and employs 60 staff. But with 1,500 youth offenders arrested every year in Oxfordshire alone, they have their work cut out.

However, the team's ultimate goal is to reduce the number of arrests made.

"We have to do something about very young children committing crime from an early age and intervene.

We also need to protect the public," she says.

So is it working? "If you talk to any of our staff they all feel it's more effective and that the changes are good. We are definitely intercepting twice as many children. We hope in the long term less will be committing more crime."

Initial signs are encouraging. One of the youngsters, a 12-year-old, is a convicted criminal. Last Christmas, he was one of four boys who mugged an elderly woman on an Oxford housing estate.

They took 20 from her purse and spent it burgers and fries. He had earlier been expelled from school after admitting stealing a teacher's purse.

Having been brought to the attention of the Youth Offending Team, he was eventually placed at a school that would accept him.

It was, the team believe, a key element in the boy's rehabilitation. He was given a mentor who acts as a sort of counselling friend. He has not re-offended since the Christmas mugging.