Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average number of previous (a) cautions and (b) convictions was for offenders who were sentenced to an immediate custodial sentence for (i) possession of a blade or point, (ii) possession of an offensive weapon, (iii) common assault, (iv) assaulting a police officer, (v) sexual assault, (vi) a public order offence, (vii) theft, (viii) robbery, (ix) burglary, (x) a drug-related offence, (xi) criminal damage, (xii) breach of an anti-social behaviour order, (xiii) fraud and (xiv) vehicle taking in each year since 2007.

The information requested is provided in the table attached with this answer. The table includes data covering the period 2007 – 2023, on the average number of a) previous convictions and b) previous cautions of offenders who were given an immediate custodial sentence when convicted for a specified offence. That is not to say that the offender was not sentenced to immediate custody for another offence prior to this conviction.

This data is not regularly published or held in an easily accessible format. The information supplied has been sourced from a complicated retrieval from the Police National Computer database.

It should be noted that sentencing decisions in individual cases are for the independent judiciary.