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Sentencing

Volume 467: debated on Tuesday 20 November 2007

To ask the Solicitor-General in how many cases she asked the Crown Prosecution Service to send her trial papers because of concern about the leniency of a sentence in each month of the last five years. (165683)

The Attorney-General’s Office publishes annual statistics on unduly lenient sentence references on its website www.attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk. The statistics are recorded by reference to each calendar year and are not broken down by individual month.

The Law Officers receive requests to review sentences as possible unduly lenient sentences from the prosecution authority, Members of Parliament, victims and members of the public.

The following table shows the numbers of offenders whose sentences were considered as possible unduly lenient sentences by the Law Officers in each of the last five years for which full statistics have been published.

Offenders considered by the law officers

2002

290

2003

270

2004

398

2005

352

2006

359

To ask the Solicitor-General how many unduly lenient sentences she referred to the Court of Appeal in each of the last five years. (165684)

The Attorney-General’s Office publishes annual statistics on unduly lenient sentence references on its website

www.attorneygeneral.gsi.gov.uk.

The following table shows the number of offenders whose sentences were referred to the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient, the number of offenders whose references were subsequently withdrawn and the number of offenders who were therefore brought before the Court of Appeal in each of the last five years for which full statistics have been published.

Offenders referred to Court of Appeal

Withdrawn references

Offenders brought to the Court of Appeal

2002

148

9

139

2003

102

6

96

2004

159

22

137

2005

127

19

108

2006

160

16

144