The following table shows the number of 15, 16 and 17-year-olds held on remand in all prison establishments in England and Wales since 1997.
Males and Females 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Aged 15 Untried 46 48 29 35 41 33 29 37 38 32 38 Convicted unsentenced 28 38 15 16 7 26 8 15 14 27 25 Aged 16 Untried 114 100 106 82 69 99 81 74 78 98 98 Convicted unsentenced 57 83 49 32 29 55 40 44 43 36 35 Aged 17 Untried 308 294 298 255 195 188 218 221 221 250 239 Convicted unsentenced 253 214 215 154 117 117 96 119 92 130 109
The figures are not broken down by area because the numbers are small and the accuracy at this level of detail cannot be guaranteed.
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.
Data are not held centrally to identify how many of the 15-17 year olds went on to serve a prison sentence. However, data collected from the courts show that 50 per cent. of those remanded in custody go on to receive a custodial sentence (data published in table 4.8 of Criminal Statistics 2005, and website www.homeoffice.gov.uk)
Information on re-offending by juveniles by police force area is not currently available. Figures for re-offending by juveniles have been published for 2000, 2004 and 2005 for England and Wales, but the data sets used do not enable analysis by police force area.
Prior to 2000, a different data source and methodology was used to calculate figures on juvenile re-offending, and these earlier figures are not comparable This is discussed in more detail and the most recent figures on juvenile re-offending can be found in “Re-offending of juveniles: results from the 2005 cohort” which can be found online at
http://www.justice.gov.uk/docs/reoffending-juveniles2005.pdf