Sentencing Mike Penning 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. The Solicitor-General 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 | ----------------------------------------------- Mike Penning To ask the Solicitor-General how many unduly lenient sentences she referred to the Court of Appeal in each of the last five years. The Solicitor-General 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were referred to the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient, the number of offenders whose references were subsequently withdrawn and the number of offenders who were therefore brought before the Court of Appeal in each of the last five years for which full statistics have been published.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| |Offenders referred to Court of Appeal|Withdrawn references|Offenders brought to the Court of Appeal| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------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 | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------