Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the report by the Traveller Movement entitled Disrupting the School to Prison Pipeline, published on 2 August 2022; and if he will take steps to implement the recommendations of that report.

The Ministry of Justice acknowledges the over-representation in the youth justice system of young people from the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Communities and is working closely with the Youth Justice Board and other government partners to address this. This government is supporting those at risk of offending at the earliest opportunity by working with families and in schools to prevent the escalation of offending behaviour and further interaction with the justice system.

Current guidance for youth offending teams sets out expectations for ensuring that pre-sentence reports are sufficiently detailed to give sentencers a full picture of the child's background, including for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children. We are giving frontline youth justice services the tools and data to understand the needs of ethnic minority children and are working to make sure alternatives to custody are used to divert children from all backgrounds away from the youth justice estate, where this is appropriate, including through Out of Court Disposals. For children who are already in the justice system, the Youth Custody Service (YCS) are putting greater emphasis on a flexible and individually bespoke approach to vocational training and technology, to improve their employment prospects and reduce reoffending.