Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what information his Department holds on what the average custodial sentence for a person convicted of murder was in each of the last 10 years.

The Ministry of Justice holds data on the average length of the minimum term (sometimes known as a ‘tariff’) for life sentences for murder convictions, as is set out below.

Data sources and quality

Note that the minimum term is the time between date of sentence and tariff expiry date. The figures do not include whole-life orders. The numbers are subject to revision as more data become available; any changes in the numbers since the last publication of this information is as a result of more sentencing data becoming available.

The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Source: Public Protection Unit Database.