PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Reoffenders: Children (6 February 2023)

In the last year, both the overall reoffending rate and the rate at which reoffending children offended (frequency rate) fell. The overall proven reoffending rate for children has fallen by 9.7 percentage points from 40.9% in 2010/11 to 31.2% in 2020/21.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 included measures to strengthen sentencing options. These include piloting of changes to the YRO with ISS which we will commence later this year. These pilots seek to give courts the confidence that children can be effectively supervised through a community sentence, which can be more effective in reducing reoffending than custody. The Act also removed the previously fixed lengths of the DTO, giving courts more flexibility to address persistent offending.