Pre-sentence Reports

(asked on 31st March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of pre-sentence reports are completed on the day at court.


Answered by
Kit Malthouse Portrait
Kit Malthouse
This question was answered on 25th April 2022

It would be misleading to give the proportion of cases sentenced without a pre-sentence report before the Crown and magistrates’ court due to the high numbers of cases for which a pre-sentence report would be unnecessary, particularly in the magistrates’ courts, for disposals of fines and discharges. This would also involve a process of matching court record data with probation data and the cost of doing so would be disproportionate.

While the decision of whether to order a PSR is up to the discretion of the judiciary, we recognise the value and importance of pre-sentence reports and are working to improve this number, and importantly also their quality, targeting and timeliness.

One example of this is through the PSR pilot that is currently running in 15 magistrates’ courts across England and Wales. As part of the pilot, we are encouraging the earlier identification of in-scope cases that would benefit from a PSR, and providing additional training and support to build the capacity of PSR writers to write higher quality reports. The pilot also requires that short format written reports are produced for three priority cohorts generally understood to have more complex needs, namely female offenders, young adult offenders and offenders at risk of custody. These more comprehensive reports may necessarily require a short adjournment.

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