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Sentencing: Young Offenders

Answer

The following tables show the (1) mean and (2) median tariff lengths for people receiving a life sentence aged 16 to 25 at the time of sentencing, by ethnicity, in each year since 2015.

Table 1: Mean tariff at sentence for life sentences by ethnicity and year of sentence

ETHNICITY	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Asian or Asian British	25	16	20	23	19	23	20	20	23	20	23
Black or Black British	19	17	19	20	20	19	20	20	20	22	23
Mixed	18	20	20	18	20	20	21	21	20	21	22
White	17	18	18	19	20	20	19	18	19	20	21
Other ethnic group	[c]	19	[c]	[c]	[c]	N/A	[c]	[c]	20	16	15
Unknown or Not stated	N/A	N/A	N/A	[c]	N/A	[c]	[c]	[c]	22	17	25

Table 2: Median tariff at sentence for life sentences by ethnicity and year of sentence

ETHNICITY	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Asian or Asian British	25	16	18	22	18	22	19	20	24	19	21
Black or Black British	17	18	18	18	18	18	18	20	20	21	21
Mixed	18	19	20	16	18	18	20	19	18	20	20
White	17	18	18	18	19	20	19	17	19	19	20
Other ethnic group	[c]	18	[c]	[c]	[c]	N/A	[c]	[c]	16	17	14
Unknown or Not stated	N/A	N/A	N/A	[c]	N/A	[c]	[c]	[c]	18	14	22

1. Tariff length is the time between date of sentencing and tariff expiry date and does not take into account any time served on remand.

2. ‘N/A’ entries include cases where a confirmed tariff expiry date has yet to be received, and any unmatched records.

3. Where necessary, [c] has been used to suppress values of one or two to prevent the disclosure of individual information. Further disclosure control may be completed where this alone is not sufficient. This could include the secondary suppression of zero values.

Data quality

The figures in these tables have been derived from administrative IT systems which, as with any large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

16092

Session

2026-27

Subjects

Ethnic groups Sentencing Young offenders

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk