Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many convictions of young people there were in (a) the North West, (b) Lancashire and (c) Preston in each of the last five years; and what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the trend in the number of such convictions.

The Ministry of Justice holds information on convictions by age group and Police Force Area, covering the period requested. The latest data available, until year ending June 2023, can be obtained in the following published tool: Outcomes by Offence tool: June 2023.

The tool linked above will allow you to select particular age groups of interest through the age group filter, and areas of the country through the police force area filter.

It is not possible to separately identify all convictions in Preston courts specifically, as those at magistrates’ courts in Preston are counted within the wider geographical area of Lancashire outlined in the first part of the question. Figures for the rest of 2023 will be available in the next update of the Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly publication, expected in May 2024.

The Ministry of Justice has not carried out any recent location-specific assessment of on how our policies have influenced the trend in the number of children convicted since 2019 in Preston, Lancashire and the North West. However, there has been analysis of the broader national trend, which is a fall in the overall number of children entering the criminal justice system more generally in recent years. Since 2012, the number of first-time entrants to the youth justice system has declined by 72%. This can be attributed to a number of drivers. These include changes to policing and criminal justice practices intended to increase police discretion to divert children who had committed low-level offences from the formal justice system, prevention programmes to support vulnerable families and Youth Offending Teams undertaking prevention work with children perceived to be at risk of offending.