Magistrates going soft on sentencing
GUILTY offenders are 25 per cent less likely to be given custodial sentences by magistrates than a decade ago.
Despite clear sentencing guidelines, new figures reveal an increasing number of magistrates are opting to give offenders community punishment orders instead.
The maximum sentence that a magistrates’ court can impose is a six-month prison term, or up to 12 months in total for more than one offence.
In England, courts imposed immediate custodial sentences in 3.8 per cent of cases in 2011, compared with 4.9 per cent in 2001.
More worryingly, the figures reveal a “postcode lottery” with some regions four times more likely to impose a custodial sentence than others.
Magistrates’ courts in England and Wales handed down almost 1.2 million sentences to men, women and children during 2011, of which more than 46,000 were custodial.
However, figures collated by the Howard League for Penal Reform, show courts in Warwickshire and Northumbria are four times less likely to jail offenders, with only 1.5 per cent of cases heard in 2011 ending with a custodial sentence, than courts in Northampton and Derbyshire, where the figure was six per cent.
Areas where magistrates have refrained from imposing custodial sentences include Bedfordshire, Dorset, Durham, Kent, Northumbria, Staffordshire and Warwickshire.
Yet Derbyshire, Gwent and Northamptonshire are now jailing a higher proportion of offenders than in 2001.
Last night Crispin Blunt MP, who was under-secretary of state for prisons and youth justice until last year, said: “Magistrates will always be anxious to avoid sending first-time offenders to custody. Having said that, there comes a moment when magistrates just run out of options.”
Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “It is pleasing to see that magistrates’ courts are sending fewer people to prison. However, one cannot ignore the striking disparity in sentencing trends between different criminal justice areas.”