The government has announced a major overhaul of the youth justice system in England and Wales, with plans to lift the criminal age of criminal responsibility, cut the number of children on remand, pilot new problem-solving youth courts and review how childhood criminal records affect people later in life.
‘Too many young people are being drawn into crime, with devastating consequences for victims, communities and their own futures’, justice secretary David Lammy said. The deputy PM continued that the reforms would ‘intervene far earlier, support families, and tackle the drivers of offending’ so that fewer young people become trapped in cycles of crime.
In its white paper, Cutting Youth Crime. Changing Young Lives, the Ministry of Justice said youth offending has fallen sharply over the past two decades, with the number of children cautioned or sentenced dropping from almost 107,000 in 2009/10 to around 13,000 in 2024/25. The number of children in custody has also fallen from around 2,800 in 2003/04 to below 400.
Ministers stated that the smaller cohort now entering the youth justice system often has more complex needs, including histories of trauma, care experience, exploitation, school exclusion, and mental health difficulties. The reforms thus include reducing the number of children remanded to custody by 25%, backed by £5 million for community placements and enhanced bail support.
The government also plans to introduce Youth Intervention Courts, designed to address the causes of criminal behaviour and reduce reoffending.
The white paper revives a long-running legal debate over the age of criminal responsibility, which remains 10 in England and Wales. Scotland raised its threshold from eight to 12 in 2021, while the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recommends a minimum age of 14.
The issue has remained particularly controversial in the United Kingdom since the James Bulger case, in which two 11-year-old boys were convicted of murder and sentenced to detention during Her Majesty’s pleasure in a Crown Court. The case later reached the European Court of Human Rights, which held in T v UK and V v UK that the boys’ Article 6 right to a fair trial had been violated because they could not participate effectively in the proceedings.
The government will also publish proposals by the end of 2026 on reforming childhood criminal records, following years of debate on the issue. The Justice Gap previously reported that England and Wales had been described by youth justice campaigners as having one of the “most punitive” childhood criminal-records regimes globally, with campaigners warning that even minor childhood offences remain on record for life without means to expunge.
