Courts ‘need to be honest’ about offenders’ sentences
COURTS and judges should be required to be more honest to victims about the actual length of sentences that offenders will serve, according to the victims’ commissioner.
In one of her final acts before she steps down as commissioner this week, Baroness Newlove is demanding courts give victims a realistic assessment of how long an offender will serve in jail rather than misleading “headline” sentences. She is concerned victims are losing confidence in the criminal justice system by being left in the dark over the way most offenders are automatically released halfway or two thirds through their sentence.
She will propose this week that judges and courts should explain the “reality of a sentence” to victims and provide them with a free copy of their closing sentencing remarks, which explain the reasoning and potential tariff an offender faces. Such transcripts normally cost £50-£60. “In cases where the offender is handed a determinate sentence, many victims hear the ‘headline’ sentence but do not appreciate that the offender is likely to be released either at the halfway point or twothirds point of the sentence,” she says.
Her intervention comes amid calls for a rethink of early release, which could put pressure on Tory leadership candidates to revive a proposal in the Conservative manifesto in 2010. This proposal would have replaced early release with minimum and maximum sentences that would have seen prisoners required to earn time off their sentence for good behaviour but was rejected in the Coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats.
Lady Newlove’s call forms part of her response to a consultation by the Government’s sentencing council, which is asking how and whether new guidelines should provide victims with “expanded explanations”.
Lady Newlove said: “My hope is that these guidelines will help witness care units in explaining the reality of a sentence to victims and give them an opportunity to ask questions.” A source said: “It is about managing expectations. It’s bad enough when you get told that an offender has been released halfway through a sentence, or early. Victims can feel there is a collusion between the criminal justice system and offender. There isn’t but that is how they can feel. If you are informed, at least you are ready for it.”
Today two victims of rape waive their
right to anonymity to describe to The Daily Telegraph how they were shocked to discover subsequently that their attackers would serve just half their sentences in jail.
The Victims’ Commissioner cites cases where offenders held “indefinitely” due to mental ill health can have the decision reviewed within two years of the sentence. In one, the family of a woman and her unborn child murdered by her partner were told he would be held indefinitely in a secure hospital, but two years later were informed “out of the blue by email” that his case for discharge was being heard by a mental health tribunal.
“The woman’s sister received the email on her way to work and was shaking and crying. She had never been informed about what a mental health tribunal is or that this could happen at some point,” said the commissioner.
Diane Harley, whose 14-year old-son Jack almost died in an unprovoked knife attack near his home in Dudley, spoke up for victims and families of the 100 killed in knife attacks this year when she demanded minimum sentences as a deterrent.
“The Government should mean what they say,” she said. “If someone picks up a weapon, it should mean a minimum of five years. I mean five years, not out in two, but five years.
“They just think it’s a game. It’s children, they’re not adults. That’s the heartbreaking thing. It’s children picking up these weapons and thinking it’s clever. It’s not. It’s a coward’s way out.”
The Ministry of Justice said: “We understand how vital it is for victims of these appalling crimes to get the information and support they need to rebuild their lives.
“Victims are already entitled to receive information on sentences and, as part of the Victims Strategy, we are improving the way court decisions are explained to ensure they are… easier to understand. Offenders are subject to strict supervision and licence conditions on release and face being recalled to prison if they do not comply.”