Prison Sentences: Terrorism
(asked on 21st February 2020) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of the prison sentence handed down by courts was served in prison by each offender convicted of a terrorist related offence in each of the last 10 years.
Keeping the public safe is this Government’s first priority – which is why we have brought forward emergency legislation that will ensure no terror offender is released before the end of their sentence without a through risk assessment by the Parole Board.
We do not hold centrally the information requested for terrorism-related offenders. However, we are able to provide data based on those serving in prison for a ‘terror legislation’ offence. Please find below a table showing this information:
Table 1: Average sentence lengths, average time served (inc. remand; in months), and proportion of sentence served in prison for those with a 'terror legislation'(1) offence; prisoner releases from determinate sentences from 2009 to 2018
(mean; months) | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015(2) | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
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Average (mean) sentence length | 43.7 | 75.3 | 92.6 | 120.0 | 67.9 | 67.5 | 96.0 | 20.9 | 29.0 | 30.2 | 43.4 |
Average (mean) time served (inc. remand) | 23.0 | 36.3 | 46.6 | 69.0 | 35.1 | 33.7 | 48.0 | 11.6 | 19.6 | 16.9 | 22.7 |
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% of sentence served in prison(3) | 53% | 48% | 50% | 57% | 52% | 50% | 50% | 55% | 68% | 56% | 52% |
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(median; months) | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015(2) | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
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Average (median) sentence length | 48.0 | 59.0 | 84.0 | 120.0 | 81.0 | 67.5 | 96.0 | 11.5 | 16.5 | 20.5 | 36.0 |
Average (median) time served (inc. remand) | 24.0 | 42.0 | 42.0 | 69.0 | 27.4 | 33.7 | 48.0 | 7.5 | 9.7 | 11.3 | 17.9 |
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% of sentence served in prison(3) | 50% | 71% | 50% | 57% | 34% | 50% | 50% | 65% | 59% | 55% | 50% |
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Notes
(1) For data from 2009 to 2015, the prison releases of offenders with a corresponding 'PREVENTION OF TERRORISM ACT' offence have been included. For data from 2015 onwards, the prison releases of offenders with a corresponding offence under a piece of terrorism legislation have been included. The effect of this difference is that in the pre-2015 data, the “PREVENTION OF TERRORISM ACT” included a smaller range of the most serious terrorism offences (which is reflected in the higher average sentence length figures for pre-2015 years in the table above), and other terrorism offences would have likely been recorded as other offences.
(2) In 2015 we made significant changes to our data source and processing. Following these changes, we are able to extract much more detailed offence information. Data for 2015 has been presented twice in the above table, one using the 'old data' processing and once under the 'new data' processing - this has been done to provide an indication of the magnitude of the break in series.
(3) Whilst the majority of determinate sentenced prisoners are released at their sentence half-way point, there are a number of reasons why someone may be released before this point. One of which is the Early Removal Scheme (ERS) for Foreign Nationals – whereby an offender can be released up to 270 days before their sentence half-way point for the purpose of deportation or removal from the UK.
Data sources and quality
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: PQs 18572 & 18573 (Ministry of Justice; DASD-JSAS)