Young Offenders: Sentencing

(asked on 22nd March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 15 March 2021 to Question 166405, how many and what proportion of young adults aged 18 to 25 years sentenced to life imprisonment received (a) a pre-sentence report, (b) a maturity assessment alongside a pre-sentence report and (c) an assessment for neuro-disabilities alongside a pre-sentence report in the most recent period for which that information can be collated at proportionate cost.


Answered by
Alex Chalk Portrait
Alex Chalk
Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
This question was answered on 25th March 2021

The National Probation Service (NPS) views maturity assessments as a critical component of an offender assessment within a Pre-Sentence Report (PSR) as articulated in Probation Instruction 04/2016: Determining PSR.

The NPS has produced maturity guidance to support PSR writers which highlights how to identify low maturity, particularly for young adults aged 18-25 years old. It also provides examples of how report writers can communicate with courts about maturity, offending and sentencing proposals.

Between July to September 2020, there were two cases of young adults aged 18 to 25 sentenced to life imprisonment who received a pre-sentence report in England and Wales.

It is not possible to give figures for the proportion of young adults aged 18 to 25 sentenced to life imprisonment who received a pre-sentence report, as this would involve a process of matching court record data with probation data and the cost of doing so would be disproportionate.

Due to the disclosure risk regarding the identification of certain attributes about a data subject that may not otherwise have been known, figures cannot be provided on the number of cases where an assessment for neuro-disabilities or maturity has been conducted.

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