Courts should pay more attention to a young person’s ‘maturity’ and less to their age when making sentencing decisions, a report by two criminal justice groups has recommended.

A research paper by the Transition to Adulthood (T2A) Alliance and the Criminal Justice Alliance has called on the government to pilot a sentencing scheme that follows the German practice of focusing on maturity rather than age.

The approach would see all young adults aged 18-20 transferred to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court, with courts given the option of sentencing them under juvenile or adult law, depending on their level of maturity.

The report said the Ministry of Justice should also consider expanding the new approach to cover all offenders aged 18-24. It said the failure of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill to address the needs of young adults was a ‘missed opportunity’, and proposed that the bill be amended so that the new sentencing approach can be piloted.

The Sentencing Council should include ‘lack of maturity’ as a potential mitigating factor in all future sentencing guidelines, reflecting reduced culpability, as it did in its new assault guidelines.

To better inform their sentencing decisions and make the proposed changes effective, magistrates and judges should be trained to recognise lack of maturity and its impact on offending behaviour, as well as how to assess maturity, the report added.

The criminal justice groups said the system’s ‘arbitrary’ determination that those over 18 are adults is out of step with cultural and social norms of transitions to adulthood.

The report noted that those aged 18 to 24, who constitute less than 10% of the population, make up almost a third of offenders found guilty or cautioned for indictable offences, and have higher reconviction rates than adults aged over 24.