Sentencing Practices and Trends, 1999–2013

Abstract

This chapter explores trends from the Ministry of Justice sentencing statistics (available at www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly). Understanding sentencing patterns is complicated by the fact that offenders often appear for sentencing having been convicted of several offences. Sometimes the offender has been charged with multiple crimes arising from the same incident; sometimes the offender will be charged with a single offence but will ask the court to take a number of others into consideration. Offenders may ask a court to impose punishment for crimes for which they have not been charged in order to clear their account as it were, perhaps because they are aware that at some point charges will be laid. The other reason for asking for other offences to be taken into account is that although additional punishment will be imposed, the offender is likely to benefit from some reduction for having freely conceded the crimes.