It cannot have gone unnoticed, that sentence lengths in the Crown Court have increased exponentially in recent years. Sentences of over 30 years for drug convictions were, only five years ago, almost unheard of. Not so now. Figures released in 2024 show that there has been an average sentence length increase from 14.5 months to 21.4 months between the period of 2012 – 2023. Over the previous 11 years there has been in increase in sentence lengths by almost 30%, and in the past 50 years sentences have actually doubled
Recognising this huge increase, 5 of the former most senior judges have intervened in the debate over the prison population crisis to urge the government to reverse the trend of locking people up for longer by declaring that ‘radical solutions’ are required to tackle the prison population crisis.
In the very recent report from the Howard League for Penal Reform, ‘Sentence Inflation a judicial critique’, significant support is given to the findings of the dangers of the huge increase in prisons sentences being handed down, by the added signatories of 5 of the previous most senior Judges in the land, notably, former lords chief justice Lord Woolf, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and Lord Burnett of Maldon, and former Queen’s Bench Division president Sir Brian Leveson. It comes as the government prepares to release 5,500 prisoners earlier than planned.
The former Law Lords said ‘There is nothing that justifies this doubling of sentence lengths. Government legislation relating to sentencing has consistently provided that imprisonment should only be imposed if there is no suitable alternative punishment, and that imprisonment should be for the minimum period commensurate with the crime. The law dictates this. The problem is that there is no objective measure for deciding what term of imprisonment is commensurate with a particular offence. Nor have governments always been content to leave it to the judges to decide the appropriate sentence.’
The judges welcomed the government’s decision to urgently review sentencing legislation and practice, but called for ‘an honest conversation about what custodial sentences can and cannot achieve’ and ‘a return to more modest proportionate sentences across the board’.
Could it be that there is a modern day common sense approach to sentencing in the realisation that an increase in sentences lengths is not necessarily a deterrent. Or, will the current Labour government feel advising on the lowering of prison sentences, could be too much of a vote loser in the face of the public perception which may cause them to quietly move away from the issue?
