Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many men have (a) been charged with and (b) served a prison sentence for non-violent crimes in the last five years.

Charging decisions are a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service, and sentencing is a matter for our independent courts. The court may only impose a custodial sentence where it finds that the offence is so serious that neither a community sentence nor a fine alone can be justified.

There is no clear definition of a non-violent crime, as both physical and psychological harm can be caused by many crimes and this will not necessarily be apparent from the description of the offence. However, the number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates’ courts and found guilty and sentenced, including to custody, by offence category and specific offence, by gender, in England and Wales, from 2011 to 2015 can be found in the Criminal Justice Statistics outcomes by offence data tool in the most recent annual publication: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-december-2015.