Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people received custodial sentences for personal possession of cannabis excluding people imprisoned for intent to supply, production, or importation in each of the last ten years.

The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the number of offenders who received custodial sentences for possession of cannabis in the Outcomes by Offence tool: December 2023.

This can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Sentence Outcomes’ tab and using the ‘Sentence Outcome’ filter to select immediate custody and the ‘HO Offence Code’ filter to select the following HO offence codes:

09261 - Having possession of a controlled drug - class B (cannabis, including cannabis resin, cannabinol and cannabinol derivatives)

09266 - Having possession of a controlled drug - class C (cannabis, including cannabis resin, cannabinol and cannabinol derivatives) – historic

Offence groups and offence types are continually revised to reflect offences accurately. However, it is important to note that data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts. As a consequence, offences that have been repealed may still be used by court administration and appear in the data.