I am pleased to introduce the Sentencing Council’s annual report for 2023/24. It is the Council’s 14th report and my second as Chairman.
Developing and revising guidelines
In the course of the year we published sentencing guidelines for animal cruelty, motoring offences, perverting the course of justice and witness intimidation. In addition we published a revised overarching guideline relating to totality, namely the approach to be taken when sentencing an offender for more than one offence or an offender who is already serving a sentence. A variety of changes to existing guidelines were introduced as a result of last year’s consultation on miscellaneous amendments to sentencing guidelines.
The guideline on motoring offences was particularly significant. The previous guideline, published in 2008 by our predecessor body, for some time had been considered to be lacking in clear guidance for sentencers. The changes to the maximum sentences for offences of causing death by driving only accentuated the problem. Sentencing such cases often raises the most difficulties in any exercise undertaken by sentencers. We hope that the new guideline will provide clarity and encourage consistency.
We opened consultations on new and revised sentencing guidelines for blackmail, kidnap, false imprisonment, immigration, aggravated vehicle taking and other motoring related offences, as well as holding the third annual consultation on miscellaneous amendments to sentencing guidelines.
We also opened a consultation on a comprehensive review of the overarching guideline, Imposition of community and custodial sentences. The consultation, which ran from November 2023 to February 2024, proposed revisions to the existing Imposition guideline to reflect changes in legislation, developments in case law, recent sentencing research, feedback from criminal justice practitioners and evidence about sentencing of particular groups of offenders.
The proposed revisions are designed to encourage courts to bear in mind the widest range of circumstances when considering the full range of sentencing options available to them, in order to make sure that the most appropriate sentence, tailored to the individual offender and offence, can be imposed.
The proposals include providing the courts with more guidance on the circumstances in which it may be necessary to request a pre-sentence report, new information on evidence regarding the effectiveness of rehabilitation when compared with short custodial sentences and new sections on sentencing young adult offenders and female offenders.
The proposed new section on sentencing female offenders directs sentencers’ attention to the potentially harmful impact of custody on both the pregnant offender and the child, considerations that are particularly relevant when the offender is on the cusp of custody. There has been considerable public debate about imprisoning pregnant offenders. We have already taken steps to respond to that debate. One of the miscellaneous amendments introduced following the third annual consultation was the introduction of a new mitigating factor, ‘Pregnancy, childbirth and post natal care’.
This new mitigating factor was generally welcomed. The same cannot be said of two other mitigating factors introduced at the same time, ‘Difficult and/or deprived background or personal circumstances’ and ‘Prospects of or in work, training or education’. In the consultation process there was substantial support for these factors including from the Justice Committee. One response from judges who did not favour the new factors said that, where relevant, they were already taken into consideration by sentencers. The view of the Council was that including the factors across all offence specific sentencing guidelines with accompanying expanded explanations would lead to sentencers taking a consistent approach.
Understanding the Council’s impact
The changes we have made to mitigating factors and their expanded explanations are the result of research we conducted last year into how expanded explanations in guidelines are interpreted and applied by sentencers in practice. We published our report of the research in March 2024. This followed on from findings from research on equality and diversity in the work of the Sentencing Council. This project was commissioned from the University of Hertfordshire as part of our strategic objective to explore the potential for the Council’s work to inadvertently cause disparity in sentencing across demographic groups.
In addition to publishing guidelines, the Council is required to monitor and evaluate their operation and effect. Where possible, we collect data both before and after a new guideline has come into effect. Analysis of these data helps us examine what might be influencing outcomes and understand how the guideline has been implemented in practice. Between 9 January and 30 June 2023 we ran a data-collection exercise in all magistrates’ courts and all locations of the Crown Court. This six-month study covered a number of offences and asked sentencers to collect information on a range of factors relevant to the sentencing decision, including harm and culpability factors, aggravating and mitigating factors, guilty plea reductions and sentence outcomes.
We appreciate that any data-collection exercise of this kind is an imposition on sentencers. We are most grateful to all the judges and magistrates who took part. The information data collections and our other research provides us with is of critical importance to all aspects of the Council’s work. In September 2023, we launched a recruitment drive for our research pool in the hope of encouraging more members of the judiciary to work with our analysis and research team to help the Council understand the impact and outcomes of sentencing guidelines.
In 2023/24 we published data covering the sentences and factors taken into account by the courts when sentencing adult offenders for robbery as part of our effort to make sentencing data available to academics and other researchers. This material was collected from the Crown Court during 2016 and 2017. It was used to evaluate the effect and operation of the Council’s Robbery guideline, which came into effect in April 2016.
The Council also undertakes research and analysis to support some of our wider statutory duties, to provide further information in specific areas or to fill gaps in existing data. During 2023/24, this work has included commissioning research to examine issues related to effectiveness in sentencing. The study will update our 2022 report with new evidence, further explore the effectiveness of sentencing as a form of deterrent to offending and consider public, offender, victim and sentencer perceptions of what makes a sentence effective. Alongside this, the analysis and research team commissioned academics at Nottingham Trent University to review how the Council’s definitive guideline, Overarching principles: domestic abuse (which identifies the principles relevant to the sentencing of cases involving domestic abuse) is used in sentencing. We expect to publish both pieces of work later in 2024.
The analysis and research team also led on a project this year investigating how sentencers and other legal professionals use the online sentencing guidelines. The work was undertaken during 2022 and 2023 by the Council and by the Behavioural Insights Team. We published the findings on 8 November 2023. This has led to a series of improvements to the website that are designed to help users find and work with the online guidelines and other sentencing-related content. More information on this work can be found on pages 49-50.
There is more information on the Council’s analysis and research work in chapter 2 and elsewhere throughout this report.
Informing and responding to decision-makers
How criminal justice bodies can collect, analyse and present data in meaningful ways to aid public understanding was a central theme of the Justice Committee report, Public opinion and understanding of sentencing, which was published in October 2023. The Council provided written evidence to the Committee and I had given oral evidence during the course of the inquiry. In November 2023 the Committee held a launch event for its report. I attended and spoke at the event. We responded formally to the report’s recommendations in January 2024 (see page 45).
In May 2023 I gave oral evidence to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee inquiry, Cutting crime: better community sentences. The purpose of the inquiry was to consider practical aspects related to the use and delivery of community sentences. My evidence to the Committee was informed in part by our 2022 externally commissioned review of current literature on effectiveness of sentencing.
On 7 September 2023 we published the Council’s response to the Domestic Homicide Sentencing Review. The Review, which had been undertaken for the government by Clare Wade KC, made several recommendations relating to Council guidelines. In response, we consulted on proposed changes to the manslaughter guidelines. Those changes, including the introduction of a new aggravating factor, ‘Use of strangulation, suffocation or asphyxiation’, came into effect on 1 April 2024.
Promoting public confidence in sentencing
When people know about sentencing guidelines and understand how sentencing works, they tend to have more confidence in sentencing and the criminal justice system.
Throughout the year, we have been working in partnership with the Judicial Office to develop You be the Judge, an interactive sentencing tool designed to engage users on the issue of sentencing and to challenge misconceptions about its leniency and fairness. You be the Judge shows how sentencing works via six short, filmed sentencing hearings.
We launched You be the Judge in July 2024, promoting it to teachers for use in schools and to public audiences of all ages, and we will report on its first year of operation in our next annual report.
The people behind the guidelines
There have been a number of changes of personnel in relation to the Council over the past year, notably the appointment on 1 October of The Right Honourable the Baroness Carr of Walton-on-the-Hill as Lady Chief Justice of England and Wales and President of the Sentencing Council. We were delighted to welcome Baroness Carr as an observer at the meeting of the Sentencing Council on 1 March 2024.
The Council was also pleased to welcome a number of new members. On 12 June 2023 His Honour Judge Simon Drew KC joined the Council as a judicial member. He has many years’ experience of sentencing in the criminal courts. He has also been a criminal-course director in the Judicial College for the last ten years.
Johanna Robinson joined the Council on 5 October 2023 as the member with responsibility for promoting the welfare of victims of crime. Johanna has served as the National Adviser to the Welsh Government on Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence since 2022 and brings a wealth of experience of the criminal justice system and the perspective of victims.
Stephen Parkinson joined the Council as a non-judicial member on 1 November 2023 when he took up the position of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). On 1 December we welcomed Chief Constable Rob Nixon QPM as the member with experience of policing. Rob is the crime and justice lead on the National Police Chief’s Council and a member of the Criminal Procedures Rule Committee. I would like to thank him for having served on the Council on an interim basis since May, pending formal confirmation of his appointment.
I would like to thank: Stephen Parkinson’s predecessor, Max Hill, who served on the Council during his tenure as DPP; Diana Fawcett, who served as the Council member representing victims between 2019 and 2023; and Her Honour Judge Rosa Dean, who left the Council on 6 April 2024, having served two terms. Rosa led on a number of significant guidelines as well as sitting on both the Governance and Confidence and Communication Subgroups. All three made important contributions to the work of the Council and I wish them well for the future.
Finally, I would like to pay tribute to the staff of the Office of the Sentencing Council (OSC). They are the Council’s most valuable resource. I continue to be greatly impressed by their expertise, professionalism and dedication.
Lord Justice William Davis Chairman
September 2024