Speeches

Gareth Johnson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gareth Johnson on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Attorney General, how many sentences referred to the Court of Appeal under the unduly lenient sentence scheme were (a) increased and (b) kept the same in each of the last five years.

Jeremy Wright

The Government has committed to extending the scope of the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme and is carefully considering its approach.

The number of offenders who have had their sentence increased under the unduly lenient sentence scheme in each of the last five years is set out below.

Year

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Offenders who have had their sentence increased by the Court of Appeal

95

62

61

106

102

Some cases attract multiple referrals from various sources and we do not record how many referrals each case has received. The total number of cases where requests were received by the Attorney General’s Office for sentences to be reviewed in each of the last five years is set out below.

Year

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Total number of referrals received by the Attorney General’s Office for sentences to be reviewed under the scheme

377

435

498

674

713

The number of sentences referred to the Court of Appeal under the unduly lenient sentence scheme that were (a) increased and (b) kept the same in each of the last five years is set out below.

Year

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Total number of sentences referred to the Court of Appeal

117

82

70

122

136

Total number of sentences that were increased

95

62

61

106

102

Total number of sentences that remained unchanged

22

20

9

16

34

The number of referrals under the unduly lenient sentence scheme that have been rejected due to falling outside the remit of the scheme in each of the last five years is set out below.

Year

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Number of referrals that have been rejected due to the offence falling outside the remit of the scheme

62

75

131

194

228

Number of referrals received out of time

3

12

9

10

16