Sentencing review ‘soon’

The Ministry of Justice will soon be announcing details of its planned sentencing review, the prisons minister said yesterday.

Lord Timpson told the Prison Governors’ Association conference:

We’ll accelerate the prison building programme, to make sure we have the cells we need. We’ll soon publish our ten-year capacity strategy, setting out how we will acquire new land for prisons, and reform the planning process.

And, as you’re aware, we will carry out a review of sentencing — with a focus on how it both protects the public and reduces reoffending. We’ll soon be in a position to share the terms of reference of that independent review and announce its chair.

One person that chair will be consulting is Sir William Davis, who sits in the Court of Appeal as Lord Justice William Davis. He chairs the Sentencing Council for England and Wales, a statutory body that sets guidelines for the courts. In an interview this week, he explained the sort of advice he could offer the sentencing review.

But what, I asked, could the council do about sentence inflation and its impact on the prison population? Davis observed that the Sentencing Council had been considering increasing the guideline for a serious motoring offence until it was advised about the additional prison places this would require.

Describing the government’s decision to release some prisoners on licence after serving 40 per cent of their sentences as “entirely unprincipled” — an assessment he did not regard as political or controversial — Davis also revealed that one of the council’s newly-revised guidelines would encourage courts to consider every possible alternative to immediate custody for offenders facing sentences of up to two years. But following reforms to the probation service introduced by the former justice secretary Lord Grayling, Davis acknowledged that community sentences were still not regarded by many sentencers as sufficiently robust.

This and earlier podcasts — including yesterday’s interview with the president of the UK Supreme Court — are now available to all my paid subscribers.