Health, immigration and crime; these three topics are, according to our political masters, the subjects most raised on the doorstep. That term "doorstep" is shorthand for what a politician seeking election thinks will carry most meaning as a personal interest for the electors many of whom have never been visited by such an individual for many years. My own suburban doorstep has been politician frei for decades. Nevertheless all three topics are a statistician`s delight. Every aspect of the inner workings, inputs and outputs and much else of their function is argued over and debated from school children being encouraged to consider how society works to cabinet ministers agreeing to disagree to preserve party unity to improve their prospects of re-election. Crime, unlike the other two topics, for all the hubbub raised in media from time to time, is rarely an issue of personal involvement. Opinions flare according to headline news. Indeed that is why since 2010 government has been able to get away with closing half the country`s magistrates courts, emasculating the legal aid service, imposing a secret courts system (the Single Justice Procedure) and using the recent pandemic as an alibi for trial delays of two years or more. The last decade has also seen that same government attempt to control the numbers of offenders who deserve immediate custody by virtue of government`s own sponsored sentencing guidelines. There is no altruism involved. No latent governmental compassion is involved. Quite simply what was once a reasonably efficient probation service has been systematically ruined by government dictat and prison services allowed to deteriorate both in those still under their control and the remainder outsourced to companies whose shareholders` dividends are their sole reason for their existence. Those are the reasons why a decade or more ago sentencing discretion in the courts which had followed an informal but well structured approach was abolished in favour of state controlled sentencing guidelines. Suspended sentences were first introduced in England and Wales by the Criminal Justice Act 1967 but their availability to courts was greatly restricted by the Criminal Justice Act 1991 which required the court to exercise its power to suspend a sentence only where it could be justified by the 'exceptional circumstances. However On 4 April 2005 two new sentences for adults aged 18 and above became available to the courts in England and Wales: the Community Order and the Suspended Sentence Order (SSO). Both sentences were intended to narrow the custody/community divide and therefore were important factors for the development of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS). Both were also intended to offer more robust, demanding and credible alternatives to short custodial sentences, thereby contributing to reductions in the prison population. Both should be served in the community. From my own experience the basic judgement that the court had to be absolutely certain that the custodial threshold had been crossed before there could be consideration of its being suspended was often overlooked by fellow magistrates as well as probation officers in their pre sentence reports. To this day, more than a decade into the current guideline, many media still refer to custody suspended as a get out of jail free card. The number of persons who received suspended sentences at magistrates courts in 2006 when revised guidelines were introduced increased more than three-fold over 2005 from 7,100 to 23,300, having been around 1,200 on average in the years from 1996 to 2004. The proportion of persons who were sentenced to suspended sentences at magistrates courts was two per cent in 2006, compared with 0.1 per cent in 2004, the last full year before the changes brought about by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. In the year ended June 2021 the number of suspended custody orders made at magistrates courts was 8,395 or 1.16% of 722,563 sentenced that year. The immediate custody rate for the same period was 1.5%. Undoubtedly the pandemic has had a major effect on the numbers during that time and is having a knock on effect with all courts severely backing up hearings.
In practice it is my opinion that it is difficult not to get an impression that there those deserving of immediate custody who are being given too often the benefit of the doubt insofar as the sentence being delivered is of custody suspended. Just a few of such recent outcomes are listed below. Media reports are as usual basic and only those attending these courts will have had the same information as the bench but nevertheless until local court reporting becomes as regular on our TV screens as "breakfast television" or weather forecasts these reports are the only media on which we can base an opinion on the outcomes so readers` opinions are as valid as any.
In practice it is my opinion that it is difficult not to get an impression that there those deserving of immediate custody who are being given too often the benefit of the doubt insofar as the sentence being delivered is of custody suspended. Just a few of such recent outcomes are listed below. Media reports are as usual basic and only those attending these courts will have had the same information as the bench but nevertheless until local court reporting becomes as regular on our TV screens as "breakfast television" or weather forecasts these reports are the only media on which we can base an opinion on the outcomes so readers` opinions are as valid as any.
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