A profile of repeat offending by children and young people in England and Wales
Case study details
| Metadata item | Details |
|---|---|
| Publication date: | 11 February 2026 |
| Owner: | Data First team, Ministry of Justice (MoJ) |
| Contact: | SRS.Impact@ons.gov.uk |
This research was conducted by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Data First team using data which has been made available through the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Secure Research Service (SRS), with funding from Administrative Data Research UK (ADR UK).
Research summary
This study provides an in-depth analysis of repeat offending by children and young people in England and Wales, using newly linked administrative data. It identifies characteristics, offending patterns, and needs of prolific young offenders, providing powerful new evidence to inform policies aimed at reducing reoffending and improving youth justice outcomes.
Data used
The research was produced through the MoJ’s Data First programme. Data First unlocks the potential of the wealth of data collected by MoJ by making linked administrative datasets from across the justice system available for research.
Access the MoJ Data First Offender Assessment dataset for England and Wales, released in 2024.
The analysis used linked datasets from the MoJ Data First programme, accessed using the ONS Secure Research Service (SRS):
- Magistrates’ Court Defendant Data for England and Wales (2011 to 2023)
- Crown Court Defendant Data for England and Wales (2013 to 2023)
- Cross-Justice Linking Dataset for England and Wales (2011 to 2023)
Additional sources included the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (2019) for socioeconomic analysis.
Methods used
The study linked criminal court records with offender assessment data using Splink – a probabilistic matching tool developed by MoJ for deduplicating and linking large datasets. The analysis focused on young people aged 18 in 2019 who had a conviction for an office committed that year, comparing a cohort of prolific young offenders (those with three or more youth convictions between the ages of 10 and 17) to non-prolific young offenders (those with no more than two youth convictions between the ages of 10 and 17). Descriptive analysis explored demographics, offence types, sentencing patterns, and criminogenic needs.
Research findings
The research found that:
- prolific young offenders were overwhelmingly male (94%) and disproportionately from deprived areas – 27% of prolific young offenders lived in the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods
- prolific young offenders exhibited higher levels of need across all areas, including accommodation, employability, relationships, lifestyle, drug misuse, alcohol misuse, thinking and behaviour, and attitudes, compared with non-prolific offenders
- school non-attendance, susceptibility to criminal peers, and childhood behavioural problems were the most pronounced differences compared to non-prolific offenders
- offending patterns showed escalation, meaning that those with more youth convictions were significantly more likely to continue offending into adulthood – 16% of those with 10 or more youth convictions received eight or more adult convictions by age 22
Full report: A Profile of Repeat Offending by Children and Young People in England and Wales – GOV.UK
Research impact
By using linked datasets made available through the MoJ Data First programme, this report offers the first in-depth analysis of relationships between reoffending rates and the needs of children within the criminal justice system. These findings provide critical new insights into the characteristics and needs of young people who are frequently convicted. By providing a clearer picture of this group, the findings can help inform policies aimed at reducing reoffending and improving outcomes for children and young people in the justice system.
Research outputs
- Ministry of Justice report, March 2025: A Profile of Repeat Offending by Children and Young People in England and Wales
- Presentation, ADR UK Conference 2025: Understanding Prolific Youth Offending through Linked Data
About the ONS Secure Research Service
The ONS Secure Research Service is an accredited trusted research environment, using the Five Safes Framework to provide secure access to de-identified, unpublished data.
If you use ONS Secure Research Service data and would like to discuss writing a future case study with us, please contact us by emailing SRS.Impact@ons.gov.uk. Please also report any outputs using the Outputs Reporting Form.