Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the average distance from home of young people accommodated in secure training centres in each year since May 2010.

Overall crime and proven offending by young people has fallen in recent years. Fewer young people have entered the criminal justice system and as a result fewer young people have ended up in custody. To deliver the best value for taxpayers we have reduced the number of youth custody places.

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) is responsible for the placement of young people in custody. Young people are placed in establishments that can most effectively manage their individual needs. While every effort is made to place young people as close to home as possible, other factors are taken into account in placement decisions, such as age, suitability of regime, risk of self-harm and the risk of harm to other.

The YJB holds data on the distance from home of young people accommodated in Secure Training Centres and Young Offender Institutions. “Home” is defined as a young person's address at the time of placement. If no address is recorded, the address of the Youth Offending Team overseeing the young person is used as a proxy.

Table A: Average distance from home (in miles) for young people in Secure Training Centres and in Under 18 Young Offender Institutions from May 2010

Data from April 2012 has been taken from eAsset, the booking system used by the Youth Justice Board for England & Wales to place young people in to custody. Data prior to April 2012 comes from the Youth Justice Board’s Secure Accommodation Clearing House System, the booking system used prior to eAsset.

This data is based on 12 monthly snapshots of the custodial population, taken on the last Friday of the month or first Friday of the following month, depending on which is nearer to the actual month end.

These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing and can be subject to change over time.

Data from April 2013 is provisional. The figures for the 2013/14 financial year will be finalised in the 2013/14 Youth Justice Statistics on 29th January 2015 and the figures for the 2014/15 financial year will be finalised in the 2014/15 Youth Justice Statistics which are anticipated for publication in January 2016.