Referral orders and youth rehabilitation orders

A referral orderGlossary termReferral order requires attendance at a youth offender panel and compliance with an agreed intervention contract. The court decides the order and its length; the panel and child agree the programme under the statutory process. It is not a court order that the child must confess to a disputed offence, and the court should not prescribe the panel’s detailed contract in advance. Sources: Sentencing Council — Sentencing Children and Young People, Sentencing Act 2020 (Sentencing Code) — base provisions with amendments separately identified

Availability before compulsion. Under Code, sections 84–85, the court must first have referral-order power: ordinarily a youth or other magistrates’ court dealing with a person under 18 when convicted; the necessary local arrangements; a guilty plea to the offence or a connected offence; no fixed-by-law sentence for the offence or a connected offence; no proposed custody or hospital order for those offences; and no proposed absolute or conditional discharge for the offence. The Crown Court trying an indictment does not acquire this ordinary magistrates’ referral-order power; its appellate powers are a different matter. The age-crossing saving in section 1 must also be considered where relevant. Sources: Judicial College — Child Defendants in the Crown Court, June 2025, Sentencing Council — Sentencing Children and Young People, Sentencing Act 2020 (Sentencing Code) — base provisions with amendments separately identified

Where available, referral is compulsory if the offence is imprisonable, the child pleaded guilty to it and any connected offence, and the statutory no-previous-conviction condition is met. The current condition in section 85(2)(c) concerns previous United Kingdom convictions. Section 85(2A) separately preserves the Member-State restriction where proceedings were instituted before IP completion day. It does not extend that restriction to proceedings instituted in 2026. Do not substitute “no previous referral order” for the statutory conviction test. Where compulsory conditions fail, referral can still be discretionary if the availability conditions remain satisfied. Thus a previous conviction or mixed pleas do not, by themselves, make a referral order unavailable. Sources: Sentencing Act 2020 (Sentencing Code) — base provisions with amendments separately identified

Length and process. The court fixes a contract period of 3–12 months under section 86. There is no further guilty-plea reduction simply applied to that referral-order period. Explain what attendance and compliance require and what happens if no contract is agreed or it is breached: the matter may return to court for the appropriate statutory decision, including revocation and resentencing where authorised. A panel cannot itself impose a DTO. Parent/guardian attendance at panel meetings has separate rules: for an under-16 child it is ordinarily required, subject to the statutory unreasonable-attendance exception and the local-authority rules. Sources: Sentencing Council — Sentencing Children and Young People, Sentencing Act 2020 (Sentencing Code) — base provisions with amendments separately identified

A youth rehabilitation orderGlossary termYouth rehabilitation order, or YRO, is a community sentence containing selected requirements. It is ordinarily available for a person under 18 when convicted, subject to incompatible or mandatory disposals and the age-crossing rules. Under Code, section 179, the offence or combination of offences must be serious enough to warrant it; crossing that threshold permits but does not compel it. Choose requirements suitable for the child, proportionate to seriousness and realistically deliverable. Consider family circumstances and the order’s likely effects. Sources: Sentencing Act 2020 (Sentencing Code) — base provisions with amendments separately identified

The order specifies an end date by which its requirements must be completed, not later than three years after it takes effect under section 187. That overall limit does not give every individual requirement a three-year maximum. Requirements can address supervision, specified activities, education, residence, prohibited activities, curfew and treatment where their separate conditions are met. Local availability, suitability and any required consent must be checked. Do not stack interventions which conflict with each other, education or a practicable routine. Sources: Sentencing Act 2020 (Sentencing Code) — base provisions with amendments separately identified

Unpaid work is an important age-specific example. It is available where the child is 16 or 17 when convicted, not merely 16 on the day the work would start. Its ordinary prescribed range is 40–240 hours, ordinarily to be performed within 12 months, subject to the Code’s separate further-proceedings provisions. The child must be suitable and local arrangements must exist. A 15-year-old does not qualify simply because the court thinks unpaid work would teach responsibility. Sources: Sentencing Act 2020 (Sentencing Code) — base provisions with amendments separately identified

Intensive supervision and surveillance (ISS) or fostering. These are custody-level YRO alternatives, not convenient additions to a low-level order. The ordinary route requires an imprisonable offence and offending so serious that, without the order, custody would be appropriate; for a child under 12, the statute applies the counterfactual of being 12. A child under 15 when convicted must be a persistent offender. ISS combines the specified intensive requirements; fostering involves the specified fostering and supervision requirements. They cannot simply be combined with each other. The separate breach route must not be mistaken for the ordinary sentencing gateway. Sources: Sentencing Act 2020 (Sentencing Code) — base provisions with amendments separately identified

An operative 2026 change: contact details. Since 29 June 2026, Crime and Policing Act 2026, section 192, requires a child subject to the relevant referral contract to notify the designated panel member of the specified names, telephone numbers and email addresses. YRO contact duties similarly run to the responsible officer, alongside the address obligations. The new information must be supplied as soon as reasonably practicable at the applicable trigger. The amendments expressly cover orders made before as well as after commencement. Explain whom to tell and how; do not leave the child thinking that telling any support worker necessarily discharges the duty. Sources: Crime and Policing Act 2026, sections 192 and 255

For a child convicted at 15, a later sixteenth birthday does not satisfy the YRO unpaid-work age condition. For a proposed DTO, use section 9's separate age, persistence and duration rules. Authorities: Sentencing Code sections 84–85, 179, 185 and 233–236.