Select committee: Justice Committee
Recommendation 31
Tenth Report - Public opinion and understanding of sentencing
Published 25 Oct 2023
Paragraph 131
Addressed to Ministry of Justice
Justice Committee Public opinion and understanding of sentencing All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
This Government, and its successors, need to think carefully about how to engage with public opinion on sentencing. There are important choices to be made about how to ascertain public opinion and the extent to which policy should be responsive to public pressure. In our view, the Government should seek to actively engage the public on sentencing policy but should do so in a structured and methodologically rigorous fashion. It should ensure that both traditional polling and deliberative methods are used, and that exercises occur at regular intervals. Finally, policy proposals on sentencing should be subject to independent evaluation, so that the resourcing implications are evaluated before they are enacted.
From: Justice Committee, Tenth Report - Public opinion and understanding of sentencing (HC 305), paragraph 131, 25 October 2023
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 18 January 2024 (deadline 25 December 2023).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's report and says it has "delivered, or are delivering, several initiatives" on public confidence and transparency, while leaving recommendations aimed at the Sentencing Council and the judiciary to those bodies.
- On sentencing remarks, it has announced "a one-year trial" letting victims of rape and other serious sexual offences request the judge's sentencing remarks free of charge in the Crown Court. It does not extend this to all victims, citing cost to the taxpayer.
- On the Victims' Code, once the Victims and Prisoners Bill has received Royal Assent, the MoJ "will be publicly consulting on an updated Victims' Code" and will consider the information on the Unduly Lenient Sentence Scheme as part of that.
- On statistics, it says its quarterly Criminal Justice System Statistics publication provides more flexible data tools than a lengthy digest would, and that it "will continue to consider options" for broader visual presentations.
- On terminology, it "share[s] the objective" of accessible sentencing language and awaits the Sentencing Academy's work. On press judges, it says any consideration is "not for government but a matter for the judiciary".