Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of sentences below three months in reducing reoffending.

The decision to impose a custodial sentence of any length is for the court in the individual case, following the law and sentencing guidelines. There will be cases where the court decides a short custodial sentence is the only sentence that is appropriate, for example, where the offender displays a pattern of re-offending. In response to the high reoffending rates of offenders, changes introduced in the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 ensure that offenders given short sentences now receive supervision and support on release for a period of twelve months. We are monitoring the effect that those provisions have on reoffending rates.