Remand in Custody: Women
(asked on 7th November 2023) - View Source
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what percentage of women remanded into custody in each of the past five years subsequently received no sentence.
The Ministry of Justice holds data on sentence outcomes and custodial sentence lengths after being remanded in custody. Data for the last five years is publicly available and can be viewed in remands data tool, available via the following link: Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
To view data relating to cases completed at magistrates’ courts, navigate to the ‘Magistrates’ Courts’ tab. To view data relating to cases completed at Crown courts, navigate to the ‘Crown Courts’ tab.
To select data for cases where the defendant is known to be female, ’01: Female’ should be selected within the Sex filter. To see data for cases where the female is aged over 18, select ‘02: Young adults’ and ’03: Adults’ in the Age group filter. To view those remanded in custody, ’03: Custody’ should be selected within the Remand status at magistrates’ court and Remand status at the Crown Court filters on the appropriate tabs.
Table 1: Proportion of women issued a custodial sentence, community sentence, other sentence, or no sentence, after being remanded in custody, in cases completed at all courts in England and Wales, between 2018 and 2022 (Note 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Outcome | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
Immediate custody | 50% | 50% | 49% | 47% | 44% |
Community sentence | 9% | 10% | 8% | 9% | 9% |
Other | 18% | 17% | 19% | 18% | 20% |
No sentence | 23% | 23% | 24% | 26% | 28% |
Source: Court Proceedings Database
Table 2: Proportion of women issued a custodial sentence after being remanded in custody, by custodial sentence length, in cases completed at all courts in England and Wales, between 2018 and 2022. (Note 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Custodial sentence length | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
1 year and over | 24% | 26% | 26% | 28% | 27% |
6 months and up to 1 year | 5% | 5% | 5% | 5% | 5% |
Over 3 months and up to 6 months | 5% | 5% | 6% | 4% | 4% |
Over 1 month and up to and including 3 months | 9% | 8% | 8% | 6% | 5% |
Up to and including 1 month | 7% | 6% | 5% | 4% | 3% |
N/A (received other sentence type or not sentenced) | 50% | 50% | 51% | 53% | 56% |
Source: Court Proceedings Database
Notes:
1) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.
2) The figures given in the table relate to defendants for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.
3) Defendants are reported against their principal (i.e. most serious) remand status. Court custody includes those remanded in custody at any stage of proceedings who may also have been given bail or not remanded at some stage of those proceedings.
4) 'To obtain percentages for cases completed at both magistrates' and Crown courts, cases where a defendant has failed to appear to their hearing have been excluded from the totals. This can be replicated within the remand tool, by deselecting '01: Failure to appear' in the Outcome filter within the Magistrates' Court tab.
5) Defendants proceeded against at magistrates’ courts and subsequently committed to the Crown Court will have separate remand decisions made in both courts and will be included in both totals. To avoid duplication of figures, those committed to trial/sentence at Crown court following a hearing at magistrates' courts have been removed from the totals. This can be replicated within the remand tool, by deselecting '03: Committed to Crown Court for trial/sentencing' in the Outcome filters within the Magistrates' Court and Crown Courts tabs.
6) Please note, an issue we are currently investigating is the high proportion of unknown remand status at Crown Court – early findings suggest that these cases are split broadly proportionally (to offence breakdowns) across those remanded at custody and those granted bail. In 2022, 24% of defendants remanded at Crown Court had unknown remand status. We are working on a solution to fill in those unknown remand statuses with the actual status. Due to this, the figures presented only includes data for those where remand status is known.
7) The figures given in the table relate to those where sex is known to be female and age is known to be 18 or over.
8) An outcome of 'no sentence' includes cases where proceedings are discontinued, withdrawn, dismissed, or discharged Sec 6 at magistrates' courts, and not tried or acquitted at Crown Court.
9) The figures given in the table under outcome 'Other' relate to cases where the offender has been received a suspended sentence, absolute/conditional discharge, sentenced to pay a fine or compensation, or has been otherwise dealt with.