New survey reveals longer prison sentences have failed to improve public confidence
The majority of people in England and Wales significantly under-estimate the severity of current sentencing practices, according to the findings of a new survey published today.
The survey, commissioned by the Sentencing Academy and launched in the latest edition of the Prison Reform Trust’s Bromley Briefing Prison Factfile, reveals that despite increases in sentence lengths over the last 25 years, there has been almost no change in the public’s general attitudes to sentencing severity.
Writing in this year’s ‘Long View’ the authors, Professor Julian Roberts and Dr Jonathan Bild of the Sentencing Academy, found that three-quarters (76%) of respondents who expressed a view (i.e. excluding those who answered ‘don’t know’) said that they believed that sentencing was too lenient, down just three percentage points since 1996.
But the survey reveals significant gaps in the public’s knowledge of what has actually happened to sentencing practices during that time.
The average length of a prison sentence has increased since 1996, rising by more than a third in the decade between 2009 to 2019 alone, with the average sentence length increasing from 13.8 months to 18.9 months.
However, when asked whether the average prison sentence had become longer, stayed the same or become shorter during this time, 75% of those who expressed a view believed that sentences had become shorter—the opposite of what has happened.
Sentencing for the most serious offence—murder—has become much more severe over the past 20 years as a result of changes introduced by Parliament in 2003. The minimum term imposed for murder—the period a person must serve in prison before release can be considered—has increased from an average of around 12 years to around 21 years today.
When asked, just 2% of respondents identified the correct answer that the average minimum term is much longer than 20 years ago and only 6% considered that such sentences had increased at all in the past two decades. Once again, of those expressing a view, three-quarters considered that sentencing levels for murder had gone in the opposite direction.
Similar findings were observed when asked about the likelihood of receiving a prison sentence if convicted of a particular offence, and how long the sentence would be on average.
In 2019, 96% of men aged 21 or over convicted of rape were sent to prison. Yet a significant minority of the public (42%) believe the imprisonment rate to be 25% or less.
Respondents were also likely to significantly under-estimate average sentence length, with almost half of those who expressed a view believing the average sentence for rape to be four years or less—compared with an actual average of 9 years and 9 months.
The same was true when respondents were asked about burglary. Three-quarters estimated that the custody rate for burglary was 50% or less, compared with the true figure of approximately 80%. Whilst the custody rate for this offence has increased notably since 1996 (61%), the public perception would appear to be that it has fallen during this time.
Commenting, Peter Dawson, Director of the Prison Reform Trust said:
“This survey exposes how decades of lengthening sentences have utterly failed to improve public confidence in our justice system. No one has noticed. Every time a minister announces that sentences will be toughened up, what people seem to hear is that they must have been getting softer.
“Countless lives have been wasted in pursuit of a policy that fails to deliver on every front. A properly informed public debate on how we punish serious crime is very long overdue.”
Commenting, Jonathan Bild, Deputy Director of the Sentencing Academy said:
“It would be naïve to think that improving public knowledge of sentencing practices alone would significantly reduce public criticism of the courts. But better dissemination of sentencing trends and information would surely contribute to improving public confidence.
“If we do not, sentencing policy will continue to be shaped by calls to increase sentence lengths still further, not because our system is lenient, but because people perceive that it is.”
