• If there is a very good reason why you cannot attend you must let the court know straight away and they will tell you what to do (for example, if you are ill you may have to send in a doctor’s note).
• The court expects your parents/carers to attend and may order them to attend if you turn up on your own.
• If you do not have a solicitor you can ask to see the duty solicitor when you arrive at court
• Someone from the Youth Justice Service will be there on court day and make sure you know what is going on and can answer any questions you might have.

Possible court outcomes

You will be asked to plead ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ to the offences (your solicitor will talk to you about this beforehand).

A referral order

If you are a young person (10–17 years old) appearing in court for the first time and you have pleaded guilty to the offence(s), you may be given a referral order.

The length of a referral order can be between 3 and 12 months. The court decides how long the order is set for, based on the seriousness of the offence.

Once the court has made a referral order, a member from the Youth Justice Service will meet with you and your parent/carer a number of times. They will then complete an assessment and produce a report for the referral order panel.

The referral order panel

The referral order panel takes places within 20 days of the court appearance and you must attend, along with your parent/carer.

The panel is a meeting with:

• volunteers who are specially trained to take part in these panels
• a practitioner from the Youth Justice Service 
• you and your parent/carer 

Sometimes the victim of the crime will also join the panel.

During the referral order panel a plan will be put together for what you will need to do on your order. This plan might include: 

• reparation work (giving back to the community and/or victim)
• work to address the offending behaviour
• how to make amends to the victim (if appropriate and subject to the victim’s consent) 
• making sure you are getting help and support to stop you from offending again.

After the panel you will work with the Youth Justice Service over the length of your order. The panel will meet with you regularly to review how you are getting on.

A youth rehabilitation order

A youth rehabilitation order (YRO) may be given if you have either:

• been found guilty at trial after pleading ‘not guilty’ to your offences 
• appeared before the court before and have previously been given court orders.  

A YRO can last for up to three years. It is a community based sentence and can have one or more (from a list of 18 possible options) requirements attached to it. This means you will need to meet with the Youth Justice Service fairly often to complete different activities and tasks. 

The type of activities that you may need to do to complete a YRO programme include:

• Supervision (meeting with your worker regularly)
• Education/training
• Reparation (giving back to the community)
• Family support
• Complete interventions/sessions on topics related to why you might have offended
• Programme of activities
• Unpaid work
• Curfew
• Non-association or other ‘prohibited activities’ (things you are not allowed to do)
• Restorative justice (an approach to help everyone affected by the crime move forward, for example this could include direct or indirect communication with the victim where the victim has agreed to take part)

This is an order which will make sure you make up for the harm caused. You will also get help and support to prevent you from offending again in the future.

Other outcomes/sentences

As well as referral orders and youth rehabilitation orders there are other outcomes/sentences that the court may give, these include:

• A fine
• An absolute discharge / conditional discharge
• A youth rehabilitation order with intensive supervision and surveillance (YRO with ISS) – this is a community order that may be available to those who have committed serious offences or who have kept re-offending (it is an alternative to custody, and may include up to 25 hours a week of supervision and activity as well as a curfew)
• A Detention and Training Order (this means serving a period of time in custody with the remainder in the community with licence conditions).
• If you are appearing before the Crown Court (instead of the Magistrates Court) there are further sentencing options available