Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to increase public confidence in non-custodial sentences.

The sentencing framework gives courts the flexibility to select community order requirements which are a robust alternative to custody, and are tailored to address the specific issues that contribute to reoffending.

Probation services are vital to the effective delivery of community sentences. In July we published the consultation Strengthening Probation, Building Confidence setting out the Government’s vision for improving probation including proposals to promote meaningful unpaid work schemes which both make reparation to communities and equip offenders with employment-related skills and experience. The action we propose to take will ensure that courts and the public can be confident that offenders sentenced to community and suspended sentence orders will be properly supervised, receive the rehabilitative support they need and that appropriate action is taken if offenders fail to comply with requirements.

We continue to actively explore many other options to improve non-custodial sentences, including better electronic tagging.