Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average length of sentence was for (a) white, (b) BAME and (c) traveller defendants convicted of murder in (i) 2017, (ii) 2018 and (iii) 2019 up to April 30.

Every offender convicted of murder must be given a life sentence as this sentence is fixed by law.

The Ministry of Justice does not hold full information on the tariff period (the minimum period that must be spent in custody) set by the court when imposing a mandatory life sentence. Information may be held in individual court records but to be able to identify these cases we would have to access individual court records which would be of disproportionate cost.

Data on the average custodial sentence length (in months) for offenders has been published by the Ministry of Justice up to December 2018 and can be filtered by ethnicity. However, in the case of murder this simply shows a life sentence. This information can be found at:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/802314/outcomes-by-offence-tool-2018.xlsx

Filter by ‘Offence’ as required.

For ethnicity breakdowns, filter by ‘Ethnicity’ for the required ethnicity.

Ethnicity information is provided using a 5+1 classification (based on the 2011 census classification) and is therefore not available for “traveller” defendants.