Community Orders

(asked on 17th November 2023) - View Source

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many community sentences were issued in each month in 2023; and what estimate he has made of the potential impact of the proposed presumption against short sentences on the number of community sentences issued in each month.


Answered by
Gareth Bacon Portrait
Gareth Bacon
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
This question was answered on 27th November 2023

We recognise that the presumption to suspend custodial sentences of 12 months or less has implications for the Probation Service, which is why we are committed to ensuring that Probation can meet any additional demand.

We have increased funding for the Probation Service by an additional £155m a year to recruit staff, to bring down caseloads and deliver better supervision of offenders in the community.

The Ministry of Justice publishes information on sentence outcomes by year and quarter in the Criminal Justice System Statistics publication. Sentence outcomes for January to June 2023 will be available in January 2024. The statistics for July to December will be available in subsequent publications. Upon publication, a breakdown by month can be requested.

Our Impact Assessment, published on 14 November 2023, provides analysis on the potential impact of the presumption to suspend custodial sentences of 12 months and less, on community-based sentencing, the probation service and the prison population. This can be found on the following link: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-04/0011/SentencingBillIAShortSentences.pdf.

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