Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were (a) prosecuted for and (b) convicted of child cruelty offences in the latest period for which data is available.

The Ministry of Justice publishes information on the number of prosecutions and convictions for a range of child cruelty offences, from the year ending June 2011 to the year ending June 2023, in the Outcomes by Offence data tool: June 2023.

This can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Prosecutions and convictions’ tab and using the HO Offence Code filter to select the following offences:

• 01103 – Cruelty to or neglect of children
• 00407 – Causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable person
• 00411 - Causing or allowing child or vulnerable adult to suffer serious physical harm.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 increased the maximum penalties for:

• Causing or allowing a child or vulnerable adult to die from 14 years’ imprisonment to life imprisonment;
• Causing or allowing a child or vulnerable adult to suffer serious physical harm from 10 to 14 years’ imprisonment; and
• Cruelty to a person under 16 from 10 to 14 years’ imprisonment.

A consequence of increasing the maximum penalty for causing or allowing the death of a child or vulnerable adult to life imprisonment is that offenders sentenced to 7 years or more for that offence will spend two thirds of their sentence, rather than half, in custody.

Partly as a result of these measures, average custodial sentence length for child cruelty offences has increased by 79.9% since 2010.