Bill Esterson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bill Esterson on 2014-03-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average length of time between judgement and sentencing in criminal trials in England was in the latest period for which figures are available; and what assessment he has made of the trends in the time taken.

Shailesh Vara

HMCTS can only answer this question for trials in the Crown Court. The case management database for magistrates’ courts does not hold the date of conviction in a way we can calculate the time from conviction to sentence for all defendants so the only way we could answer the question would be to manually check each case file which would incur disproportionate costs.

The Crown Court database does and Table 1 below shows the average length between the latest conviction date in a trial and the date of sentence. The trend has seen the time between conviction and sentence falling from an average of 35.8 calendar days in 2007-08 to 24.6 calendar days in the first half of 2013-14. When a trial has more than one offence the jury may not reach verdicts against all on the same day, and the sentence cannot take place until all offences have a verdict.

Notes:

1. The average number of calendar days between the latest jury conviction date and the earliest substantial sentence date.
2. Includes cases where the defendant changes their plea to guilty during the trial.
3. This is internal management information run specifically to answer this question.

The judiciary are able to sentence following conviction without the need for additional hearings as a result of initiatives currently in place. The judicially lead early guilty plea scheme aims to have guilty plea cases concluded at a single hearing. Similarly the probation service are able to provide reports on the day of conviction to facilitate the sentencing of the defendant.

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