§ Mr. MacleanTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment he has made of the re-offending rates of (i) persistent young offenders and (ii) all young offenders. [70614]
§ Mr. BoatengThe Government have no information about re-offending rates. Information is available about re-conviction rates. Persistent young offenders (as defined in joint Home Office/Lord Chancellor's Department Circular "Measuring Performance to reduce delays in the youth court system") have not been routinely identified in the past in data used to produce re-conviction rates. Plans are in place to do so in future.
Reconviction rates are available for all young offenders. The table sets out the percentage of those aged 10–17 convicted of a standards list offence in 1994 who were re-convicted for such an offence within two years, across a range of disposals.
Percentage Disposal Age at sentence 10–17 Conditional discharge 58 Fine 66 CYP1 supervision order 79 Probation 87 Community service order 74 Custodial sentence2 81 Attendance centre order 72 1 Children and Young Persons Act 1969 2 Excludes detentions under section 53 of the Persons Act 1963 The Government have embarked upon a radical restructuring of the youth justice system, including reforms to the youth court and range of new sentencing options. The system as a whole has been given a new statutory aim—to prevent offending by children and young persons. The new court disposals that have been introduced, including the action plan and reparation orders and the new custodial sentence, the detention and training order will all have a clear focus on rehabilitation and preventing future offending and re-offending.