Everything you need to know about sentencing…

It’s not always easy to be clear about trends in sentencing. The fact that we have a two-tier system (Crown and Magistrates’ Courts) and that the number of people prosecuted in court has been falling can make it trickier to decipher changes. But it’s important that governments, researchers, policy makers, pressure groups and others all base their views on the facts.

The Ministry of Justice publishes a range of regular statistical bulletins and reports with up-to-date information, often underpinned by publicly available datasets. 

These can, however, not always be straightforward to access if you’re not used to MoJ systems.

Therefore, I’ve constructed this compendium of sentencing information which will be updated when the latest statistics are published.

You can either browse the whole collection of slides (see further down this page) or follow the links in the bullet points below to go to individual charts.

• Compare the number of people sent to prison each year with those starting probation supervision 
• Compare the use of immediate prison sentences, suspended sentences and community sentences 
• See what offences people are sent to prison for
• Look at sentence lengths (& see just how common short sentences are) 
• Compare reoffending rates for different sentences
• Look at the changes in sentences passed on those committing knife crimes 

If you can’t see the visualisation below on your device, you can find it here.

Compendium last updated 30 January 2021