Call for Evidence: Ministry of Justice Independent Review on the Future of Criminal Courts for Children (England and Wales)

The Ministry of Justice of the United Kingdom has appointed Professor David Ormerod CBE, KC (Hon) as Expert Adviser to take a fundamental look at the function and purpose of the criminal courts for child defendants in England and Wales, and to identify options for longer term reform. He is supported by an independent panel of experts and by a dedicated secretariat drawn from Ministry of Justice staff.

The published Terms of Reference explain the problem the review is addressing. The youth court was established in 1992 as a specialist court recognising the distinct statutory aims of the youth justice system, but the way the criminal courts deal with children has changed very little in the last thirty years, while the cohort of children before the court has shrunk in number and shifted towards more serious and violent offending with complex underlying needs. The Terms of Reference also record that long standing patterns of inequality continue to shape the experiences and outcomes of children in the criminal courts.

The work began in June 2026 and the Expert Adviser will report his findings in full by August 2027.

Read this honestly before you spend time on it. Nothing you send is published, peer reviewed, indexed or certified. There is no prize, no honorarium and no publication outlet. What you send goes to the review secretariat as evidence that may inform the Expert Adviser's recommendations to the Ministry of Justice.

It is worth doing if you research or practise in youth justice, juvenile sentencing, child defendants, court procedure for children, or comparative youth justice, and you want your work to reach a government review that will report in 2027. It is not worth doing if what you need is a publication line on your CV.

The Terms of Reference set out the scope. The Expert Adviser will examine existing practice and gather evidence to assess:

• whether the existing structure and practices of the criminal courts support children to turn their lives around and prevent crime
• the current end to end pathway for child defendants, including the suitability of existing settings, that is the youth court, the magistrates' court, the Crown Court and the Court of Appeal
• children's interaction with and experience of the criminal court system and the professionals within it, with particular focus on overrepresented groups, namely children from ethnic minority backgrounds, children with special educational needs or disabilities, children with additional learning needs, and care experienced children
• how court experiences and court outcomes are linked to children's reoffending
• what can be learned from approaches in other jurisdictions and international comparators
• the merits of more clearly separating the youth and adult sentencing frameworks, how that might be achieved through legislation, its feasibility, and whether it would require further changes beyond sentencing, for example to release, recall and custody arrangements
• whether other cohorts, particularly vulnerable adults and young adults up to the age of 25, should be subject to a different process in the criminal court system

The Terms of Reference carry an open invitation: the review welcomes your views on challenges affecting criminal courts for children in England and Wales and on possible solutions. The review team also state that they are interested in novel approaches to youth justice more broadly, including case studies from other jurisdictions.

There is no prescribed form, word limit or template. A written submission by email is the route. The Society of Legal Scholars, relaying the review team's request to the academic community, notes that the chair will separately approach individuals with particular expertise, but that being approached is not a precondition for writing in.

The Terms of Reference place no restriction on who may write in. There is no requirement to be based in the United Kingdom, to hold a UK qualification, or to be an invited stakeholder. The review's own wording expressly invites case studies from other jurisdictions, which is the part of the scope where a submission grounded in Indian juvenile justice practice can carry weight.

Relevant Indian material would include the working of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, the Juvenile Justice Boards and Children's Courts, the treatment of children in conflict with law aged 16 to 18 in heinous offence cases, and the practical experience of preliminary assessment and transfer. If you can speak to how a separate juvenile forum functions in practice, including where it fails, that is squarely within the comparative limb of the scope.

Note the obvious limit: the review is about the criminal courts of England and Wales. A submission that only describes Indian law without connecting it to a question the review has actually asked is unlikely to be used.

Send your views by email to the review at criminalcourtsforchildren@justice.gov.uk. There is no online portal and no registration step.

• State clearly which limb or limbs of the Terms of Reference your submission addresses.
• Identify yourself and your institution or practice, and say what your evidence is based on.
• Keep comparative material tied to a specific question in the scope.
• Government reviews normally treat submissions as capable of being published or summarised, so do not include material you are not prepared to have quoted or attributed. If you need your submission treated in confidence, say so expressly in the email and ask the secretariat to confirm.

Two dates matter and they are not the same thing.

• 30 September 2026 is the date the review team has asked academics to aim for, communicated through the Society of Legal Scholars, with submissions accepted as soon as possible thereafter. Treat this as the working target if you want your evidence to land while the review is still forming its view.
• 1 February 2027 is the hard cut off stated on the Ministry of Justice's own page: the review will not be able to process submissions made after that date.