Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress his Department has made on the policy details of the Problem Solving Court pilot.

We have created the necessary legislative provisions to enable Problem-solving Court (PSC) pilots within the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022. We have committed to up to five pilots to test this new and innovative approach with offenders with substance misuse issues, female offenders, and domestic abuse perpetrators.

The Problem-Solving Court pilots will be available to offenders who fit certain criteria to be specified in regulations and who can be diverted into a Community Order or Suspended Sentence Order with intensive rehabilitative requirements to meet criminogenic needs alongside punitive requirements.

We are considering a range of locations to ensure that the pilots are situated in the best possible areas that provide the broadest range of support services to help manage offenders in the community. We will be implementing the pilots over the course of the Spending Review.