Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce levels of violent crime.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Government is determined to crack down on the scourge of violence devastating our communities, and tackling violent crime, including knife crime, is a priority.
Violent crime can have devastating and long-lasting impacts on victims, families and communities. This is why the Home Office has invested over £136.5 million over three years (19/20 – 21/22) to support the police to take targeted action in the 18 areas in England and Wales most affected by serious violence; £105.5m, over three years, in Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) to tackle the root causes of violence; £200m over ten years in the Youth Endowment Fund for early intervention and prevention; and this year we announced an additional investment of up to £23 million for new early intervention programmes that will help stop young people from being drawn into violence.
Across England and Wales, we are recruiting 20,000 additional police officers and increasing the amount of funding available to the policing system for 2021/22 by up to £636 million, totalling £15.8 billion. 8,771 additional police officers have been recruited as part of the Police Uplift Programme at 31 March this year, all working to keep our communities safe.
We also continue to strengthen the law on knife crime and serious violence. The Offensive Weapons Act 2019 introduced Knife Crime Prevention Orders (KCPO). These preventative orders enable the courts to place positive intervention requirements as well as other measures including prohibition to carry a knife on individuals to help the police steer those most at risk away from serious violence and to set them on a more positive path.
In March the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill was introduced. The bill includes a duty on public sector bodies to take a joined-up approach to addressing serious violence; the requirement for local agencies to review the circumstances when an adult homicide takes place involving an offensive weapon; and Serious Violence Reduction Orders, which give the police the power to stop and search known knife and offensive weapons carriers.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what the average tariff length imposed for murder was in each year since 2000.
Answered by Lord Wolfson of Tredegar
The average length of the minimum term (sometimes known as a ‘tariff’) for life sentences for murder convictions since 2000 is as follows:
Year of Sentence | Average minimum term (years) |
2000 | 13 |
2001 | 13 |
2002 | 13 |
2003 | 13 |
2004 | 14 |
2005 | 15 |
2006 | 17 |
2007 | 15 |
2008 | 17 |
2009 | 17 |
2010 | 19 |
2011 | 18 |
2012 | 20 |
2013 | 20 |
2014 | 20 |
2015 | 20 |
2016 | 20 |
2017 | 20 |
2018 | 21 |
2019 | 21 |
2020 | 20 |
Data sources and quality
Note that the minimum term is the time between date of sentence and tariff expiry date. Time on remand is taken into account when setting the tariff expiry date. The figures do not include whole-life orders.
The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Source: Public Protection Unit Database.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of trends in the level (a) youth crime and (b) violent crime in Hornsey and Wood Green constituency in the last three years; and what (i) steps she is taking and (ii) resources she is allocating to tackle those crimes.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
It is vitally important that we prevent young people from being drawn into violent crime. The Government is committed to reducing serious violence and putting an end to the tragedies afflicting our communities.
The Home Office collects data from police forces on police recorded crime, broken down by Police Force Area and Community Safety Partnership Area, including the London borough of Haringey. Data is not collected at parliamentary constituency level. The latest data can be found here (This includes the number of recorded offences of violence against the person):
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables
In March the Home Office announced its £130.5 million investment in tackling serious violent crime, including homicide and knife crime, in 2021-22. This includes an extra £30 million to support the police in taking targeted action in parts of England and Wales most affected by serious violence, and up to £23 million for new early intervention programmes that will help stop young people from being drawn into violence. This includes programmes which use significant moments in a young person’s life – such as when they enter police custody or Accident and Emergency – as opportunities for trained professionals to engage and divert young people away from violence.
In total, £105.5 million, over three years (2018 – 2021), has been invested in multi-agency Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) in the 18 areas most affected by serious violence, which bring together local partners to deliver an effective, joined up approach to tackling violent crime and its drivers. £21 million was allocated to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) to develop the London VRU, covering all London boroughs. £136.5 million, over three years (2018 – 2021), has also been allocated to the same 18 police forces to fund a surge in police operational activity. The Metropolitan Police Service have been allocated £42,547,955 of this funding.
In addition we have invested £200 million in early intervention and prevention support initiatives over 10 years to support children and young people at risk of exploitation and involvement in serious violence, through the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF). The government has awarded an extra £5 million towards the expedited development of a national Centre of Excellence (CofE) to help guide government investment and national policies.
In March a new criminal justice bill was introduced to Parliament – the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The bill includes a duty on public sector bodies to take a joined-up approach to addressing serious violence; the requirement for local agencies to review the circumstances when an adult homicide takes place involving an offensive weapon; and Serious Violence Reduction Orders, which give the police the authority to stop and search known knife and weapons carriers.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce levels of knife crime.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Government is determined to crack down on the scourge of violence devastating our communities, and tackling knife crime is a priority. Across England and Wales, we are recruiting 20,000 additional police officers and increasing the amount of funding available to the policing system for 2021/22 by up to £636 million, totalling £15.8 billion.
Over the last two years we have invested a total of £176.5 million through the serious violence fund to address the causes of serious violence and to bolster the police response in police force areas most effected by serious violence across England and Wales. We have set up Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) in the 18 worst-affected local areas. VRUs bring together police, local government, health and education professionals, community leaders and other key partners to identify the drivers of serious violence, to help them to implement a long term, multi-agency approach, to stop violence from happening in the first place.
We have committed a further £130.5m to tackle serious violence and homicide in 21/22, including funding for targeted policing and interventions to protect young people from involvement in violence.
We have also invested £200 million through the 10-Year Youth Endowment Fund to ensure those most at risk are given the opportunity to turn away from violence and lead positive lives.
We also continue to strengthen the law on knife crime and serious violence. The Offensive Weapons Act 2019 introduced Knife Crime Prevention Orders (KCPO). These preventative orders enable the courts to place positive intervention requirements as well as other measures including prohibition to carry a knife on individuals to help the police steer those most at risk away from serious violence and to set them on a more positive path.
Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs) have been introduced in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Bill and will give the police powers to make it easier to stop and search those already convicted of knife and offensive weapon offences.
We have also introduced legislation which will place new duties on a range of specified agencies across different sectors, such as local government, youth offending, and health and probation, to work collaboratively, share data and information, and put in place plans to prevent and reduce serious violence.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders released on licence following a life sentence have committed (a) homicide and (b) other offences in each of the last five years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Serious further offences are very rare. Fewer than 0.5% of offenders under statutory supervision are charged with a serious further offence.
An offender sentenced to life imprisonment is eligible for release on life licence only once he has completed the minimum term (tariff) specified by the Court at the point of sentence. It falls to the independent Parole Board to determine whether to release a life sentence prisoner who has completed his minimum term and the Board will direct release only where it is satisfied that it is no longer necessary for the purposes of public protection for the prisoner to remain confined.
The Ministry of Justice does not keep the figures requested in relation to (b) other offences and to obtain them would incur disproportionate cost. The Ministry of Justice does capture however,
the more serious further offences (SFOs) by means of the Probation SFO Review Procedures. In accordance with those Procedures, the National SFO Team in HM Prison and Probation Service is notified of an offender subject to statutory probation supervision appearing in court charged with a qualifying offence under Probation Instruction 2018 06
https://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/offenders/psipso/psi-2018/pi-06-2018-sfo-procedures.doc.pdf.
Accordingly, there are published statistics on convictions for an SFO on the part of an offender on life licence, arising from notifications to the National SFO Team between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2018. I have provided the link below. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/serious-further-offences.
We will publish SFO conviction data for 2018/19 in October 2020.
The table below shows these figures broken down by homicide and other serious offences for 2015- 2018 which is the most recent available data in the last five years.
| Serious Further Offence (SFO) type |
| |
Year | Number of offenders on life sentence who committed homicide | Number of offenders on life sentence who committed other serious further offences | Total |
2015 - 2016 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
2016 - 2017 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
2017 - 2018 | 5 | 7 | 12 |
Total | 9 | 15 | 24 |
14 offenders have been sentenced to life in the last five years who had received one or more previous life sentence on a separate occasion.
Section 21 of Criminal Justice Act 2003 sets out the starting point for the sentencing Judge to impose a whole life tariff in cases where an offender has been previously convicted of murder.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders sentenced to life in the last five years had received one or more previous life sentences on a separate sentencing occasion.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Serious further offences are very rare. Fewer than 0.5% of offenders under statutory supervision are charged with a serious further offence.
An offender sentenced to life imprisonment is eligible for release on life licence only once he has completed the minimum term (tariff) specified by the Court at the point of sentence. It falls to the independent Parole Board to determine whether to release a life sentence prisoner who has completed his minimum term and the Board will direct release only where it is satisfied that it is no longer necessary for the purposes of public protection for the prisoner to remain confined.
The Ministry of Justice does not keep the figures requested in relation to (b) other offences and to obtain them would incur disproportionate cost. The Ministry of Justice does capture however,
the more serious further offences (SFOs) by means of the Probation SFO Review Procedures. In accordance with those Procedures, the National SFO Team in HM Prison and Probation Service is notified of an offender subject to statutory probation supervision appearing in court charged with a qualifying offence under Probation Instruction 2018 06
https://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/offenders/psipso/psi-2018/pi-06-2018-sfo-procedures.doc.pdf.
Accordingly, there are published statistics on convictions for an SFO on the part of an offender on life licence, arising from notifications to the National SFO Team between 1 April 2013 and 31 March 2018. I have provided the link below. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/serious-further-offences.
We will publish SFO conviction data for 2018/19 in October 2020.
The table below shows these figures broken down by homicide and other serious offences for 2015- 2018 which is the most recent available data in the last five years.
| Serious Further Offence (SFO) type |
| |
Year | Number of offenders on life sentence who committed homicide | Number of offenders on life sentence who committed other serious further offences | Total |
2015 - 2016 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
2016 - 2017 | 2 | 4 | 6 |
2017 - 2018 | 5 | 7 | 12 |
Total | 9 | 15 | 24 |
14 offenders have been sentenced to life in the last five years who had received one or more previous life sentence on a separate occasion.
Section 21 of Criminal Justice Act 2003 sets out the starting point for the sentencing Judge to impose a whole life tariff in cases where an offender has been previously convicted of murder.
Asked by: Philip Hollobone (Conservative - Kettering)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average length of sentence served by people convicted of murder was in each of the last five years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information you ask for is routinely published and therefore available in the public domain, however, I have provided it below for ease of reference. The table shows the average time served by individuals sentenced to mandatory life, the only sentence available to the Courts for those convicted of murder, who were released from custody in each of the last five years.
2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
17 | 16 | 16 | 17 | 17 |
As with any large-scale recording system, administrative IT systems are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Public protection is our priority. It is for the independent Parole Board to review the detention of those prisoners serving mandatory life sentences who have completed their tariff period. The Board will direct the release of these prisoners only if it is satisfied that the levels of risk posed to the general public are reduced enough that the National Probation Service and its partner agencies can safely manage them in the community under supervision.
Asked by: Philip Hollobone (Conservative - Kettering)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people convicted of homicide did not receive a custodial sentence in each of the last five years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Ministry of Justice has published information on the sentencing outcomes for offenders convicted of homicide offences (murder, manslaughter and infanticide) in each of the last 5 years. This information is available in the Outcomes by Offence data tool available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/802314/outcomes-by-offence-tool-2018.xlsx
Filter ‘Offence’ to ‘1 Murder’, ‘4.1 Manslaughter’ and ‘4.2 Infanticide’.
Asked by: Yasmin Qureshi (Labour - Bolton South East)
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.
Answered by Robert Buckland
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:
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.
Asked by: Laurence Robertson (Conservative - Tewkesbury)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average time is that people convicted of murder offences have spent in custody in the last three years.
Answered by Rory Stewart
The average number of years served by those serving a mandatory life sentence (the sentence given to all those convicted of murder) is published in table A3.3 of the OMSQ Annual Releases publication:
2018 figures will be published at the end of April 2019.
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Public protection is our priority. Offenders serving life sentences will only be released if the independent Parole Board is satisfied that it is safe to do so based on a thorough assessment of risk. Once released, they remain on life licence for the rest of their lives and can be recalled from community to custody at any time.