11.1.3 Offending in special groups

Children and young people

• The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 abolished doli incapax, the rebuttable presumption that had applied to children aged 10 to 13 in England and Wales.

• A child under 10 in England and Wales who breaks the law is managed by a civil Child Safety Order, not arrest or prosecution, however serious the act.

• Reaching the age of criminal responsibility does not establish fitness to take part in proceedings, and developmental immaturity can impair participation without any diagnosis.

• Recorded male offending in the UK peaks at 17 to 18 years, and the female peak comes earlier, in mid-adolescence.

• Theft in a young person with a psychiatric disorder most often reflects conduct-dissocial disorder, because ICD-11 lists deceitfulness or theft among its defining behaviour groups.

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Women

• Men are convicted roughly five times as often as women in the UK, and women make up under 20% of convictions (about one in six or seven).

• Women have historically been under one in twenty prisoners in England and Wales, many sentenced for non-violent offences.

• Female offending is under-reported to the police, so official statistics understate it relative to self-reported offending.

• Psychopathy, conduct disorder and serious offending are all commoner in males.

• Women with marked psychopathic traits tend to present in a flirtatious, emotionally unstable style.

• Domestic and childhood abuse are common, and recorded self-harm is particularly high in women's prisons.

• The Corston report (2007) argued for community services designed for women.

Prisoners

Older prisoners (60 and over)

• Just over half have at least one psychiatric disorder, and depression is the commonest, at about 30%.

• Antisocial and avoidant personality disorders are the two commonest types in sentenced older prisoners, each at around 8%.

• Older men convicted of sexual offences show more schizoid, obsessive-compulsive and avoidant traits than older men convicted of other offences, with similar rates of mental illness.

Intellectual disability and autism

• Prison prevalence estimates for intellectual disability range from under 2% to about 30%, with typical figures of 0.5 to 1.5%.

• Convicted offenders with intellectual disability are mostly at the milder end of the range, and severe disability is under-represented.

• Violence, sexual offences and arson are all over-represented.

• Contact sexual offending is the over-represented index offence, but only in men; non-sexual non-violent offences are not over-represented.

Sexual offending and stalking

• Men whose sexual offending is confined to indecent images of children are better educated, more often employed, higher earning, younger and more often single than contact offenders.

• They also have fewer previous convictions, less substance misuse and fewer antisocial traits.

• Personality disorder is the commonest diagnostic category in people who stalk, ahead of psychotic, mood and substance use disorders, though only about half have any mental disorder.

Ethnic minority groups

• The Lammy review (2017) found minority ethnic defendants made up about a fifth of the relevant court caseload, against roughly an eighth of the population.

• The AESOP study found higher rates of first-presentation psychosis in Black African and Black Caribbean than White British people, with more compulsory admissions and police involvement.

Deaf and physically disabled offenders

• British Sign Language (BSL) has its own grammar and is recognised in England, Scotland and Wales by the BSL Act 2022.

• Written English and lip reading may not give a first-language BSL user reliable access, so use a qualified, registered interpreter, never a relative or investigating officer.

• Language deprivation and ordinary BSL structure can be mistaken for thought disorder.

• Reasonable adjustments for disability are duties under the Equality Act 2010 in Great Britain.

Fair participation

• Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights requires effective participation and a fair trial, with communication support where needed.