On 24 February 2026, the Secretary of State for Justice and Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy MP, laid out his vision for the future of the courts at Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) tour, with a view to reducing the courts backlog. 

Key provisions outlined in his speech included: 

• Unlimited sitting days in the Crown Court next year

• Changing the threshold for jury trials, with the introduction of a new “Swift, Bench Division” of the Crown Court for certain cases, where judge-only trials will be used for cases likely leading to sentences of up to three years

• Enabling more ‘blitz courts’, where similar cases are listed together over short periods to concentrate court resources

• Piloting a new AI listing assistant for judges, that processes all the information and data available to the judiciary, to assist them to make more intuitive listing decisions. 

Within the recent flurry of announcements focused on reforming the justice system, including the Sentencing Act, reforms to policing, and the youth justice system, T2A continues to be concerned about the lack of a young adult-focused framework within these provisions.  

Any steps to reform the justice system through ‘swifter justice’, and meaningfully divert young adults away from cycles of crime, must take into account and include: 

• A specific framework for sentencing young adults aged 18-25, recognising that they have not reached full maturity 

• Mandatory written pre-sentence reports for all young adults 

• Training for legal professionals and sentencers, both within the Magistrates and Crown Courts, on the needs and experiences of young adults 

• Greater emphasis on deferred prosecutions for young adults, in line with increased usage outlined in the Sentencing Act 

• Consideration of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and neurodivergence, which are highly prevalent amongst young adults caught up in the criminal justice system. 

A specific framework for sentencing young adults 

T2A has long called for a distinct statutory framework for young adults in the justice system, one that reflects what the science has made clear for decades: the brain continues to develop actively until at least the mid-twenties. This is not a peripheral finding. It means that many young adults who come before the courts have not yet fully developed the cognitive capacities that underpin sound decision-making – including impulse control, risk assessment, and the ability to weigh long-term consequences. These are not character failings. They are developmental realities. Yet the current sentencing framework treats an 18-year-old as indistinguishable from a 40-year-old. The result is sentences calibrated to punish rather than to change, and the evidence is unambiguous that punishment alone does not reduce reoffending. What does work is a framework that takes maturity seriously and assesses the developmental stage at the point of sentence, builds in structured opportunities for review as a young person grows and changes, and prioritises the conditions for desistance over the logic of containment. That is better for victims, better for communities, and better for public safety. 

Mandatory written pre-sentence reports for all young adults 

Pre-sentence reports (PSRs) are assessments prepared by the Probation Service to help sentencers determine an appropriate sentence, featuring relevant information about the person and the reasons why a particular sentence (i.e. community or custodial) could be effective. Research shows that those who receive a PSR are more likely to complete their court order, and the assessment of a young adult’s maturity and capacity to engage in desistance with a particular sentence is crucial to enabling young adults to rehabilitate. It was, therefore, disappointing to see the 2025 Sentencing Guidelines direction that young adults should receive a PSR struck off in amendments. T2A remains committed to probation services completing pre-sentence reports on all young adults, including an assessment of their maturity, with a clear direction to the court on an effective age-appropriate sentencing response. Any steps to use AI to speed up court processes should consider how pre-sentence reports can be included in moves to innovate. 

Training for legal professionals and sentencers, both within the Magistrates and Crown Courts, on the needs and experiences of young adults 

The neuroscientific evidence on brain development is only useful if the people making decisions about young adults in the criminal justice system actually understand it. At present, too few do. T2A is calling for mandatory training on maturity and adolescent development for prosecutors, defence lawyers, and sentencers, not as an optional professional development exercise, but as a baseline competency for anyone working with this age group. The stakes are high. Analysis of court judgments has found that maturity was applied as a mitigating factor in only 28 per cent of cases involving defendants aged 18 to 21, and just 6 per cent of those aged 22 to 29, despite clear Sentencing Council guidance when making sentencing decisions on age and lack of maturity as relevant considerations.  

T2A’s own research on magistrates’ courts found that awareness and application of maturity as a mitigating factor remains inconsistent and often absent. This is not a matter of interpretation. It is a pattern of routine disregard for existing guidance. Prosecutors need the tools to assess maturity when weighing culpability. Defence lawyers need the knowledge to raise it effectively. Sentencers need to understand how developmental immaturity shapes decision-making and to apply that understanding consistently. A legal system that takes maturity seriously would not only deliver fairer outcomes, but it would also deliver faster ones, by cutting court processing times and lead to swifter justice: a clearer shared framework reduces the procedural uncertainty that slows cases down and drives up costs for everyone. 

Greater emphasis on and use of deferred prosecutions for young adults, as outlined in the Sentencing Act 

For many young adults, the moment of arrest or charge is also a moment of potential turning point but only if the system creates the conditions for change rather than immediately foreclosing them. T2A supports a much greater use of deferred prosecution for young adults, particularly for lower-level offences. Deferral creates space: time for support services to engage, for underlying needs to be addressed, and for the young person to demonstrate the kind of positive change that a rushed process would never allow to emerge. This is not softness on crime. It is realism about how change actually happens especially for young adults carrying the weight of adverse childhood experiences, trauma, or unmet mental health needs. The Sentencing Act provides the legislative basis for this approach, and the 2017 Lammy Review called for exactly this kind of presumption. A system serious about reducing reoffending would use every available tool to interrupt the pathway into deeper criminal justice involvement before it becomes entrenched. Deferred prosecution, used consistently and supported by wrap-around services, is one of the most cost-effective ways to do that. 

Consideration of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and neurodivergence 

Neurodivergence and neurodisability are not marginal characteristics in the young adult justice system, they describe the majority of those within it. Research shows that traumatic brain injury alone affects between 50 and 80 per cent of people in prisons, while over 60 per cent of young people in the criminal justice system present with speech, language and communication needs, and approximately 30 per cent on young adults in prison present with ADHD. Despite these figures, the young adult estate has no equivalent of the systematic screening tool used in youth custody, as the Comprehensive Health Assessment Tool stops at 18, and nothing replaces it. The consequence is predictable and well-documented; behavioural presentations rooted in trauma, neurodivergence, and unidentified brain injury are routinely misread as deliberate non-compliance, generating disciplinary responses – adjudications, segregation, extended custody – that compound harm rather than address its origins. 

Both neurodivergence and neurodisability can and should be a mitigating factor in sentencing, but that depends entirely on it first being identified. T2A is calling for universal mandatory screening for neurodivergence, neurodisability, traumatic brain injury, and adverse childhood experiences across all custodial settings holding young adults, and for this to be embedded within a reformed sentencing framework that requires assessment of need before sentence is passed. This is not a welfare add-on. It should be a basic precondition for any system that is serious about reducing reoffending. 

Looking forward 

Overall, T2A understands the push towards swifter justice, but urges caution in not needlessly pushing young adults further into cycles of crime through directives to cut processing times. The move towards improving experiences, services and outcomes for victims is a welcome and necessary development that will resonate with everyone and draw broad support, but it must be held alongside an equally important truth that the majority of young adults caught up in the criminal justice system are themselves victims – of abuse, neglect, exploitation, poverty, institutional failure, and violence – often long before they caused any harm to others.  

These are not competing facts. They are the same story, told from different points in the same life. A truly effective and fair justice system must be willing to hold both truths at once. Real accountability for the harm caused, and genuine care for the harm suffered. To address one whilst ignoring the other is simply not justice at all. Justice for everyone ultimately means focusing on prevention and reducing reoffending, and we hope that in further steps to modernise the justice system, the Secretary of State will refer back to recommendations made in his 2017 Lammy Review, that needless criminalisation is an injustice in itself.  

“These disproportionate numbers represent wasted lives, a source of anger and mistrust and a significant cost to the taxpayer […] The review was established to ‘make recommendations for improvement’ […] It reflects a growing sense of urgency, across party-political lines, to find solutions to this inequity.” – David Lammy MP

T2A calls on the Government to take this window of opportunity for reform to reimagine and rethink justice for young adults. It is significant that the Justice Committee has called an inquiry into young adults (and children) in the secure estate – the first time it has focused on young adults since 2016 – and T2A hopes that the recommendations that emerge from this will be actioned in a timely way.