07/11/2023
Police Oracle
Today’s King’s Speech contained a long list of hardline criminal justice measures committing the Government to introduce tougher sentences for rapists and murderers
The last 20 years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of people serving long prison sentences. There is no official definition of how long a person needs to spend in prison to be classed as a ‘longterm’ prisoner, but the general understanding is that this term applies to anyone who spends 10 years or more in custody. This includes people serving indeterminate sentences, such as a Life sentence and the sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP); as well as those sentenced to a determinate sentence of 20 years or more. Most people currently in prison serving a determinate sentence will spend half of their sentence in custody, and the rest in the community under licence, as set out in the 2003 Criminal Justice Act.
If a person breaches the terms of their licence, then they may be recalled back to custody. A person sentenced to a 20-year prison sentence would expect to spend 10 years in custody, and a further 10 in the community under licence conditions.
There are a number of exceptions to this. The government has introduced a number of changes meaning that people who have committed certain violent, sexual or terrorist offences serve a greater proportion of their sentences inside.
The latest data (all facts and figures taken from the most recent Prison Reform Trust, Bromley Briefing – the accepted go-to resource for everyone interested in penal affairs) show that at the end of 2022, 7,951 people were currently in prison serving a life sentence. Of those, 7,150 were yet to be released—the remaining 801 people were back in prison having been recalled from licence. Of those 7,150 people yet to be released, one in six (15%) had a tariff of 10 years or less, almost half (48%) over 10 years and up to 20 years, and a third (34%) have over 20 years.
More than one in five people in prison on a life sentence (22%) had already served their minimum term. They had spent an average of 9.2 extra years in prison.
People serving mandatory life sentences for murder are already spending more of their sentence in prison. On average they spend 18 years in custody, up from 13 years in 2001. Judges are also imposing longer minimum terms. The average minimum term imposed for murder rose from 13 years in 2000 to 21 years in 2021.
To put all these facts and figures in some sort of context; England and Wales have more people serving life sentences than Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and Sweden combined—the highest in Europe by a significant margin.
The new measures
The King’s Speech confirmed the (much-trailed) introduction of a new sentencing bill under which:
Interestingly, the King’s Speech also contains what some would say are contradictory measures – introducing a presumption against prison sentences for less than 12 months, primarily to tackle our prison overcrowding problem and extending Home Detention Curfews to “suitable” offenders serving four years or more.
A new Criminal Justice Bill also has some new powers for probation officers, enabling them to: