Question reference: S6W-07231
- Asked by: Jamie Greene, MSP for West Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 11 March 2022
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Current status: Answered by Keith Brown on 18 March 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what its estimate is of the reduction in offenders going to jail as a result of its policy on the presumption against short-term sentences.
Answer
The presumption against short sentences was extended from 3 months or less to 12 months or less in July 2019. While relevant sentencing data is being monitored, the impact of COVID-19 on court business means it is not possible to confidently identify and attribute cause to any trends in court disposals in the period monitored to date. Caution is also required generally in attributing changes in sentencing patterns to any particular factor.
A bulletin ‘Extended presumption against short sentences: monitoring information - January - December 2020’ was published on 23 March 2021 and is available at www.gov.scot . In addition, the latest criminal proceedings bulletin presents data for the financial year 2019-2020, which includes 9 months of sentencing data after the extension.
While there is no estimate in the reduction of people receiving custodial sentences as a result of the presumption, the criminal proceedings statistics show that between 2018-19 and 2019-20, there was a 13 percent reduction in the number of custodial sentences of 12 months or less from 9,585 to 8,324. The number of custodial sentence of “up to 3 months” decreased by 19% from 3,139 in 2018-19 to 2,551 in 2019-20, and is less than half the number ten years ago.