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Remissions Of Sentences

Volume 983: debated on Thursday 1 May 1980

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asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will take steps to extend the period of remission of sentence from one-third to one-half for offenders serving less than 18 months.

I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to a question by her on 28 April and to my right hon. Friend's statement to the House yesterday on the implementation of the recommendations

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many young offenders received suspended sentences in 1979 and for each of the preceding five years; and what proportion of these was subsequently convicted of further offences.

The number of persons aged 17 and under 21 years given a suspended sentence of imprisonment is published annually in "Criminal Statistics, England and Wales" (tables 6.14, 1(d) and 5(d) of the volume for 1978 Cmnd. 7670); information for 1979 is not yet available. The information available on the breaching of these sentences is given in the following table, but the proportion of such sentences breached cannot be obtained by dividing the second column by the first because the breach may be of a sentence given in an earlier year and the person may be 21 or over before the breach occurs and so excluded from the table. Table 34 of the publication "Previous Convictions, Sentence and Reconviction" (No. 53 in the Home Office research study series, a copy of which has been placed in the Library of the House) gives estimates of reconviction within six years of sentence of males aged 17 and under 21 given suspended sentences in January 1971.of the Committee of Inquiry into the United Kingdom prison services.