Source · Select Committees · Justice Committee
Recommendation 3
3
Accepted
Paragraph: 36
Public unawareness of sentencing trends undermines informed debate and policy decisions.
Conclusion
It is concerning that much of the public is not aware of recent trends in sentence lengths.It means that the public is not able to consider individual sentences within a wider context. Low levels of understanding of sentencing has an effect on the quality of public debate on sentencing, which in turn can have an influence on sentencing policy.
Government Response Summary
The government highlights its existing quarterly Criminal Justice System Statistics publications and user guides, noting their focus on user needs. They state they will continue to consider options for broader visual presentations of data to aid understanding, indicating ongoing efforts rather than new commitments.
Paragraph Reference:
36
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
17. The quarterly publication of Criminal Justice System Statistics has developed significantly in recent years to continue to address as many users’ needs as possible, in a far more flexible way than would be possible with a lengthy digest—for example, providing more detailed data tools that enable users to self-serve and cut data in a whole variety of ways, and through development of the raw data themselves. We continue to invite user feedback on all our publications and produce our statistics with focus on the code of practice for statistics, with a key focus on user needs. We also publish a comprehensive user guide that takes people through our data, providing commentary alongside our data tables each quarter. We will continue to consider options for broader visual/html-based presentations of our data and are ambitious for continual improvement without overwhelming users.