Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average length of custodial sentence was for children and young people in (a) Secure Training Centres, (b) Young Offender Institutions and (c) Secure Children's Homes in each of the last 10 years.

Data on the length of custodial episodes for children and young persons is contained in the Youth Justice Annual Statistics which can be found at the following link.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/youth-justice-statistics

A custodial episode is defined as the total length of time the child or young person spent in custody, from the date they were admitted from the community to the date the custodial episode ended (either because they were released to the community, transitioned to the over 18 estate, transferred to a mental health unit or they turned 18). It should be noted that a custodial episode may contain nights spent on remand as well as those spent serving a sentence.

Supplementary table 7.30 contains a table by sector type.

If the child or young person has multiple custodial sentences of the same type, only the sentence with the most serious offence group will be included in the snapshot reports contained in the report. Analysis of all of the custodial sentences to which an individual has been sentenced would require examination of each offender’s own records and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

Juvenile proven reoffending data, by custody release for England and Wales, broken down into three-monthly periods can be found in the attached table. Reoffending data more generally is contained in the Proven Reoffending Statistics, which can be found at this link:

Proven reoffending statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)