Today I am publishing the government’s Youth Justice White Paper, ‘Cutting Youth Crime, Changing Young Lives’, which sets out our plan to reform the youth justice system in England and Wales so that it intervenes earlier, responds more consistently, and does more to protect the public.

Over the past two decades, sustained efforts across the system have led to very significant reductions in the number of children entering the formal youth justice system and the number of children in custody. As a result, the system is now working with a much smaller but far more complex cohort, including many children who face multiple and overlapping vulnerabilities including substance misuse, children who are victims of exploitation, and in some cases children who present a serious risk of harm to others. However, the systems and structures designed for an earlier era have not kept pace. This limits our ability to prevent escalation, reduce reoffending and keep victims and communities safe.

This government is clear about the balance we must strike. Children are still developing and have a strong capacity to change, and the system must respond accordingly. But avoiding unnecessary criminalisation must never come at the expense of public protection. Where children’s behaviour causes harm, or where risks escalate, the system must act decisively. Firm, timely and proportionate intervention is essential both to protect the public and to support children to change course.

We will strengthen early intervention to prevent risky behaviour or offending from escalating. This includes continuing to invest in the Turnaround programme, improving alignment with wider services that support children at risk, and taking action against the adults who exploit children and draw them into crime. We will also publish a strengthened national protocol to reduce the unnecessary criminalisation of children in care and care leavers, while ensuring that risks are identified and managed effectively.

Where offending does occur, children must receive the right response at the right time. We will reform the youth out-of-court-resolution framework to improve public confidence and ensure interventions address the drivers of offending. We will take a fundamental look at the function and purpose of criminal courts for children, pilot new problem-solving Youth Intervention Courts, and develop specialist training requirements for lawyers representing children. We will ensure custodial remand is used appropriately and fairly, and modernise the sentencing framework to support public protection and rehabilitation. Alongside this, we will deliver proportionate reform of the childhood criminal records regime, so that people who have turned away from offending do not face lifelong consequences for childhood mistakes.

We will strengthen local youth justice services so they are equipped to manage risk and deliver effective interventions for today’s cohort. We will reform youth justice service oversight and funding arrangements and we are reforming the role of the Youth Justice Board to sharpen its focus on continuous improvement, so that children receive consistently high-quality support wherever they live. We will back innovation and modernisation through a new Youth Justice Innovation Fund, new devolution arrangements and better use of technology.

This government is clear that, in some cases, custody is a necessary and appropriate response to protect the public. But we must ensure children come out better than they went in. We are taking action to improve safety, safeguarding and education across the youth custodial estate, while setting a clear long-term direction away from large, outdated institutions, towards smaller, more rehabilitative settings that better support children to turn their lives around. We will set out further detail in a Youth Custody Transformation Plan in the autumn.

Taken together, these reforms represent a decisive shift for youth justice. A system that intervenes early to prevent escalation, provides firm and decisive community responses, and uses custody where necessary, is a system that will cut youth crime and change young lives.

The White Paper is being laid before Parliament today.

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