Sentencing
(asked on 10th November 2014) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many times a sentence has been altered under section 155 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 in the last five years; and what the (a) offence, (b) sentencing variation and (c) reason for the sentence being altered was in each case.
Section 155 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Courts Act 2000 provides for the Crown Court to vary or rescind a sentence imposed, or other order made, by the Crown Court within 56 days of the original sentence being made. The power to vary is primarily to rectify small technical errors and not to allow for a fundamental change of mind.
The number of sentences which were varied in Crown Court trials the last five years is as follows:
Number of Crown Court sentences recorded as replaced on CREST, by offence group | |||||
Offence Group | 09/10 | 10/11 | 11/12 | 12/13 | 13/14 |
Burglary | 120 | 189 | 182 | 220 | 129 |
Criminal damage | 25 | 34 | 22 | 26 | 13 |
Drug offences | 304 | 436 | 495 | 472 | 407 |
Fraud and forgery | 199 | 333 | 312 | 349 | 228 |
Indictable motoring offences | 35 | 34 | 42 | 33 | 24 |
Other indictable offences | 344 | 488 | 604 | 359 | 294 |
Robbery | 125 | 147 | 164 | 130 | 97 |
Sexual offences | 313 | 243 | 236 | 284 | 191 |
Summary Motoring Offences | 9 | 18 | 7 | 5 | 2 |
Summary Non-motoring Offences | 52 | 99 | 104 | 67 | 99 |
Theft and handling stolen goods | 193 | 282 | 303 | 205 | 256 |
Unknown | 72 | 122 | 60 | 44 | 36 |
Violence against the person | 282 | 387 | 390 | 302 | 268 |
Total | 2,073 | 2,812 | 2,921 | 2,496 | 2,044 |
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1. The above figures only relate to cases committed or sent for trial. | |||||
2. The above figures relate to actual sentences replaced; they do not relate to the number of defendants involved. | |||||
3. The data were extracted from CREST, the Crown Court case management system specifically to answer this question. | |||||
4. The data are management information and not subject to the same level of checks as Official Statistics. | |||||
The fact a sentence has been replaced is recorded on the Crown Court case management system, CREST. Whilst the new sentence will also be recorded it is not possible to link the two for every offence to calculate the variation. The reason for the sentence being varied is not recorded on CREST and can only be found by manually checking case files at disproportionate cost.