Youth Court and Welsh Language — SQE1 FLK2 Criminal Law and Practice

Two brothers, aged nine and eleven, take a mountain bicycle from a neighbour's front garden and hide it in woodland. A doorbell camera records both of them. Both admit it when the police call at the house. The neighbour wants the pair of them prosecuted. The officer tells their mother they are much too young for any of this to go anywhere. Who is right? Neither, quite.

The nine-year-old cannot be prosecuted, whatever the evidence and whatever part he played. The eleven-year-old is criminally responsible on exactly the same basis as an adult. Where that line falls, and what happens to the boy on the wrong side of it, is this episode. Youth Court and Welsh Language. Keep the older brother in mind.

Here is the route. The age lines first, because everything turns on them. Then the youth court itself, and what makes it different. Then the cases that leave it: homicide, grave crimes, and where an adult is charged alongside. Then sentencing, from referral orders up to detention. And last, the right to use Welsh.

Start with the ages, and there are four lines to hold. Under ten, no criminal responsibility at all. That is section 50 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. A child is under fourteen. A young person is fourteen to seventeen. Eighteen and over is an adult, dealt with in the ordinary courts.

The line that matters most is ten, and there used to be a second stage behind it. A defendant aged ten to thirteen was presumed incapable of crime unless the prosecution proved he knew the act was seriously wrong, not merely naughty. That presumption was abolished by section 34 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, and the House of Lords later confirmed that no defence of that kind survives either.

So a girl of thirteen who says she thought shoplifting was no worse than a prank is criminally responsible exactly as an adult would be. Her age goes to sentence, not to liability. Which is why our nine-year-old walks and his brother does not.

Now a rule that catches people, and it is worth easy marks. Jurisdiction is fixed by the defendant's age at his first appearance in court, not his age when he offended. Offend at seventeen, get charged slowly, turn eighteen before the first hearing, and you are in the adult court. The age at the offence still matters. It matters to sentence, not to venue.

The youth court itself, then. It is not a separate institution. It is a magistrates' court sitting as a youth court, usually in a different room of the same building, dealing with defendants aged ten to seventeen. The bench is three magistrates drawn from the youth panel, or a District Judge sitting alone. There is no jury.

Two features you must know. The court is closed: the public cannot sit in the gallery, and only the defendant, the family, lawyers, witnesses and court officers may attend. And parents or guardians must attend, and can be fined if they do not. The press may come in, which brings us to the second feature.

Section 49 of the same 1933 Act imposes an automatic reporting restriction. Nothing may be published which is likely to lead the public to identify a child or young person concerned in the proceedings. Name, address, school, photograph. Publishing it is a criminal offence, and the court can lift the restriction in limited circumstances, such as for the detection of crime.

And note who commits that offence. Whoever publishes. A seventeen-year-old who posts his friend's name and school to a few hundred followers has published just as surely as a newspaper. Tell your client, and tell the family, that nobody should be posting about the case.

Now the cases that leave the youth court, and there are three routes out. Homicide is the easy one. A child or young person charged with murder or manslaughter must be sent to the Crown Court, whatever their age. The youth court has no jurisdiction over homicide at all.

Grave crimes are the hard one. Broadly, offences for which an adult could get fourteen years or more, plus certain sexual and weapons offences. Here the youth court has a choice, not a duty. It sends the case up only if it appears that on conviction the offender ought to get long-term detention under section 250 of the Sentencing Act 2020.

In practice that means a real prospect of a custodial term substantially exceeding two years. Otherwise the youth court keeps the case. Its own ceiling is a twenty-four month detention and training order. And keeping it is not a one-way door: if it tries a grave crime and convicts, it can still commit for sentence to the Crown Court. That is why the guideline encourages it to retain jurisdiction when it cannot yet tell.

The third route out is an adult co-defendant, and this one has two steps. Step one: a young person charged jointly with an adult appears before the adult magistrates' court, not the youth court. That is an exception to the youth court's otherwise exclusive jurisdiction.

Step two is where he is tried, and that is a different question. If the adult is sent to the Crown Court, the court must send the young person too. But only if it is necessary in the interests of justice for them to be tried together. That is section 51(7) of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Otherwise the charge is severed and goes back to the youth court. And an adult can never be tried in the youth court.

Sentencing now, and three principles run through all of it. First, welfare. Section 44 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 requires every court dealing with a child or young person to have regard to their welfare. The duty is unqualified. It does not weaken because the offending was violent, or persistent, or because custody is in contemplation.

Second, reduced culpability. Maturity, judgement and the ability to foresee consequences are still developing, so the younger the defendant the greater the reduction. Susceptibility to peer pressure, exploitation by adults, learning difficulties and neurodivergence all feed into it. Third, custody is a last resort, and the court must be satisfied that nothing else will do.

And the guidelines are youth-specific. Sentencing a child for robbery, you use the Sentencing Council's robbery guideline for children and young people, not the adult one. There is no sentencing grid. The approach is individualistic and centred on the child, and a youth rehabilitation order with intensive supervision is normally considered before custody.

Then the sentences themselves, and they run in a ladder. At the bottom, the referral order. It is the standard sentence for a young offender pleading guilty to an imprisonable offence with no previous conviction. Where those conditions are met the court must make one, unless it is imposing custody, a hospital order or an absolute discharge.

The order refers the young person to a youth offender panel: trained community volunteers plus someone from the youth offending team. The panel agrees a contract with him lasting between three and twelve months. Reparation, programmes, meeting the victim if the victim consents. Refuse to agree a contract and he goes back to court to be sentenced again.

Next rung, the youth rehabilitation order. It is the main community sentence for ten to seventeen year olds, and it is a single order carrying whichever requirements fit the offender. Supervision. Activity. Curfew, with electronic monitoring. Exclusion. Residence. Drug treatment. Mental health treatment. Reparation. Attendance centre. The order can run for up to three years.

Its heavy version is intensive supervision and surveillance: at least twenty-five hours of supervised activity a week for the first three months, plus electronic monitoring. That is the credible alternative to custody. Breach any requirement without reasonable excuse and the court can add requirements, extend the order, or in a serious case impose custody.

One thing to clear away here. Older sources talk about action plan orders, supervision orders, curfew orders, exclusion orders and attendance centre orders as separate sentences. All five were abolished by section 6 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 and folded into the youth rehabilitation order, where they survive as requirements. If a past paper offers you an action plan order, it is testing whether you know that.

Top rung, the detention and training order. It is the standard custodial sentence for twelve to seventeen year olds, under sections 233 to 235 of the Sentencing Act 2020. Two conditions. The offence must be imprisonable in an adult's case. And it must be so serious that neither a fine alone nor a community sentence can be justified.

Two more things about it. For a twelve to fourteen year old it is available only if the court finds the offender is a persistent offender. And the lengths are fixed: four, six, eight, ten, twelve, eighteen or twenty-four months. Nothing in between. So our eleven-year-old cannot receive one at all. Detention and training starts at twelve.

The order then splits in half. The first half is served in detention, in a secure children's home, a secure training centre or a young offender institution, depending on age and vulnerability. The second half is served in the community under the supervision of the youth offending team. A twelve-month order therefore means six months detained and six months supervised.

Breach the supervision half and the matter goes back to court, on information laid before a justice of the peace. A youth court may order further detention for the shorter of three months and the remainder of the term, or impose a fine, and supervision continues either way. Note what that is not. It is not an executive recall directed by the Secretary of State. That is how licence recall works on longer sentences, and confusing the two is a common error.

Above all of that sits detention at His Majesty's Pleasure, section 259 of the Sentencing Act 2020. It is the mandatory sentence where a person under eighteen is convicted of murder, and there is no fixed maximum. The court sets a minimum term, and the offender is detained until the Parole Board considers release safe.

One update worth having. The minimum term starting point comes from Schedule 21, and the old flat figure of twelve years for every under-eighteen no longer applies. For convictions on or after 28 June 2022 the starting point comes from a table. It is keyed to the offender's age at the offence, and to the figure that would have applied at eighteen. Then the court adjusts for aggravation and mitigation.

Three smaller sentences complete the list. A fine, assessed on ability to pay, and a parent or guardian can be ordered to pay it. An absolute or a conditional discharge. And a reparation order, which requires amends to the victim or the community, and for which the court must consult the victim first.

Last section, and it is a different subject entirely. Welsh. Section 22 of the Welsh Language Act 1993. In any legal proceedings in Wales, the Welsh language may be spoken by any party, witness or other person who wishes to use it. Read that again for what it does not say.

It does not say only where the speaker cannot manage English. A man fluent in English who has dealt with you in English throughout may still give his evidence in Welsh. It does not say with the other side's consent. And it is not confined to any level of court. The court arranges interpretation, or a Welsh-speaking bench.

Two refinements. First, in courts other than magistrates' courts, rules of court may require prior notice. Second, the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 gives the language official status in Wales, and establishes that Welsh should be treated no less favourably than English. But the courtroom right itself is the 1993 Act.

So the practical advice is simple. Ask your client early, and tell the court early. Interpreters and Welsh-speaking court staff have to be arranged in advance, and nobody should be disadvantaged, delayed or put to extra cost for choosing to use Welsh.

A word on how SQE1 tests this. You will not be asked to name a case or quote a section number. You get a scenario, five answers, and one instruction: pick the best one. So learn the rules, and how they decide facts. The provisions in this episode are memory pegs, nothing more.

If you keep only three. Section 44 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, the welfare duty that colours every youth sentencing decision. Section 49 of the same Act, for reporting restrictions that bind everybody, not just the press. And section 22 of the Welsh Language Act 1993, which gives the right to anyone who wishes to use Welsh.

Four traps the examiners set. One: doli incapax is gone. If an answer says the prosecution must prove that a twelve-year-old knew what he did was seriously wrong, it is describing law abolished in 1998. Under ten, no liability. Ten and over, the same as an adult.

Two: jurisdiction turns on the age at the first appearance. Not the age at the offence, and not the age at conviction. A defendant who has turned eighteen by his first appearance goes to the adult court, however young he was when he offended.

Three: breach of the community half of a detention and training order is a court process. Information laid, a summons, a youth court, further detention or a fine. It is not an executive recall by the Secretary of State. That is licence recall on longer sentences, and the two get confused.

Four: the right to use Welsh is not a concession to people who struggle in English. It belongs to any party or witness who wishes to use it, in any court in Wales. An answer conditioning it on need, or on the prosecution agreeing, is wrong.

Quick check. A boy of fourteen and a man of twenty-five are jointly charged with robbery. The man threatened a delivery driver with a knife while the boy emptied the van. The man's case is to be sent to the Crown Court. The boy has one previous conviction, for shoplifting, and is assessed as heavily influenced by the older man. The prosecution invite the court to send both up so they can be tried together.

Where will the boy be tried? Three candidate answers. One: both must be tried together in the Crown Court, because they are jointly charged. Two: both must be tried in the youth court, because the boy is only fourteen. Three: the boy stays in the youth court unless a joint trial is in the interests of justice. Pause here if you want a moment.

The answer is three. Being jointly charged with an adult puts the boy before the adult magistrates' court. It does not settle where he is tried. The court must send him up with the adult only if that is necessary in the interests of justice. Otherwise the charge is severed and dealt with in the youth court.

Why the others fail. One treats a joint charge as decisive, and it never is. Two gets the destination right by the wrong route, and states a rule that does not exist. An adult can never be tried in the youth court, so a joint trial there was never available.

Five things to take away. One: nothing under ten, full responsibility at ten, and jurisdiction fixed by the age at first appearance. Two: the youth court is a magistrates' court, closed, with no jury, and reporting restrictions that bind anybody who publishes.

Three: homicide goes to the Crown Court automatically. Grave crimes go only where a term substantially exceeding two years is in real prospect. And a youth jointly charged with an adult is severed back, unless a joint trial is necessary. Four: welfare, reduced culpability, custody as a last resort.

Five: in Wales, Welsh may be used by any party or witness who wishes to, whatever their English. And our two brothers? One was never in the system at all. The other is in it on the same footing as an adult, and his age will tell at sentence, not at verdict. That is the last topic in Criminal Law and Practice.

Practise this topic with exam-style questions at sqe1prep.co.uk. This episode is for education and exam revision only, not legal advice, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the SRA or Kaplan.