Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many and what proportion of people convicted of violent offences who previously had (a) none, (b) one to four, (c) five to nine, (d) 10-15, (e) 16-25, (f) 26-50, (g) 51-75, (h) 76-100 and (i) 101 or more convictions received (i) an immediate custodial sentence, (ii) a suspended sentence and (iii) a community sentence in each year since 2007.

The information requested is provided in the tables attached with this answer. These table include data covering the period 2007 – 2023, on:

• The number of occasions on which an offender was convicted of a violence against the person offence with a specified number of previous convictions and received a specified sentence.
• The percentage of occasions on which an offender was convicted of a violence against the person offence with a specified number of previous convictions and received a specified sentence.

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.