What’s the point of longer prison sentences?

Work with offenders on a new survey on public perceptions of the length of prison sentences

Most people in England and Wales significantly under-estimate the severity of current sentencing practices, according to the findings of a new survey published yesterday.

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.

Bromley Briefings

The Prison Reform Trust publishes its Bromley Briefings twice a year. Produced in memory of the penal reformer Keith Bromley and funded by the Bromley Trust, the briefings are the go-to resource for anyone working in the prison sector who needs to know the latest, authoritative information. The briefings cover who is in prison (broken down by every available demographic), for how long, what their needs are and what happens to them on release.

Every edition of the briefing starts with an essay, known as the “Long View” which provides an in-depth exploration of a key penal issue. The Long View in the current edition is written by Professor Julian Roberts and Dr Jonathan Bild of the Sentencing Academy, focuses on the survey findings. The headline finding was 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.

Misinformation

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.

Conclusion

The authors question the policy (adopted by both main political parties) of continuously lengthening prison sentences. The rationale for this appears to be predominantly one of making the government of the day appear “tough on crime” while the evidence suggests that the public generally thinks that the government is moving in the exact opposite direction.