Skip to main content

Young People: Remand in Custody

Volume 495: debated on Wednesday 8 July 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many juveniles remanded in custody were subsequently (a) acquitted and (b) given a non-custodial sentence in (i) a magistrates’ court and (ii) the Crown Court in each year since 2003; (284299)

(2) what proportion of juveniles appearing before a court on (a) Monday to Friday and (b) Saturday were given a custodial remand in the most recent year for which figures are available.

The information contained in the table shows the proportion of juveniles remanded in custody who were subsequently acquitted or given a custodial sentence at all courts, England and Wales 2003 to 2007. These data are from the Ministry of Justice Court Proceedings Database. Data for 2008 will be available in the autumn of 2009.

Information on the proportion of juveniles appearing before court on a particular day, who were remanded into custody is not collected centrally.

Estimated proportion of juveniles1 remanded in custody2 who were subsequently acquitted or received a non-custodial sentence3 at magistrates courts and the Crown court, England and Wales 2003-07Percentage20032004200520062007Magistrates courtsAcquitted3431282624Non-custodial4243444551Crown courtAcquitted1816141214Non-custodial2621211818 1 Defined as being aged 10-17 at the date of appearance in court.2 Includes those remanded in custody at any stage of proceedings at magistrates and Crown courts who may also have been given bail at some stage of those proceedings. 3 For magistrates courts, the proportions receiving a non-custodial sentence are presented as a percentage of those cases that were completed in a magistrates court and therefore exclude those committed for trial or sentence at the crown court. Non-custodial sentences include discharges, fines, community sentences, and a number of other sentences that do not involve incarceration. Acquitted includes proceeding discontinued, discharged, withdrawn and dismissed.Note:Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.It is known that in some police force areas, information on remand decisions is not always readily available to those coding court proceedings returns. In certain cases, the return may be mistakenly coded as if no remand had taken place. For magistrates court proceedings, the number of remands and more importantly, the number which are in custody, are believed to be under-recorded in total. As the breakdown of remands into bail and custody cases for a number of forces is not accurate for a number of forces, estimates have to be made to provide national figures. For this reason proportionate figures have been provided in the table.