Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many sentences of between 12 and 24, months for which offences, have been suspended in each year since the changes made to suspended sentences in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 came into force.

Since December 2012, the courts have discretion to suspend a custodial sentence for any offence where the sentence is for two years or less, where previously only sentences of 12 months or less could be suspended.

The information requested regarding the length of suspended sentence orders is not centrally held. The number of people given a suspended custodial sentence broken down by offence, in England and Wales, from 2012 to 2014 (the latest data available), can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2014 under “Criminal justice statistics outcomes by offence data tool”.