Public understanding
Most individuals would agree that public understanding is a crucial part of the legitimacy of the prison justice system. This analysis report assesses public understanding of some key phrases utilized in sentencing in England and Wales, together with life imprisonment, suspended sentences and the sufferer surcharge.
It explores public understanding of those phrases and exams whether or not alternate options are extra simply understood. Maybe most curiously, the analysis additionally examines the consequences of assorted phrases on the notion of whether or not sentences are applicable, too lenient or too extreme. The report engages with a current coverage proposal to restructure determinate sentences of imprisonment to permit for earned launch.
The report discusses findings from a survey utilizing a nationally consultant pattern of 1,844 members of the general public performed by YouGov for the Sentencing Academy and the College of Galway in August 2025.
Key findings
The survey checked out a variety of various phrases utilized in sentencing. There have been plenty of circumstances the place the present terminology was discovered to be complicated together with:
The time period ‘victims providers levy’ is best understood than the current time period ‘sufferer surcharge’. 44% of individuals surveyed (wrongly) thought that “sufferer surcharges” had been paid to the precise sufferer of a selected cost, quite than to help victims providers basically.The time period ‘sufferer affect assertion’ is best understood than the current time period ‘sufferer private assertion’. Greater than a 3rd of individuals (incorrectly) thought {that a} “sufferer private assertion” was both a press release about their private circumstances or a press release which helped police examine a criminal offense whereas its function is to tell the courtroom in regards to the results of the crime on the sufferer.There was a lack of knowledge of the implications of breaching a group order.The time period ‘suspended sentence of imprisonment topic to good behaviour’ was most popular to the present time period ‘suspended sentence order’.
Transparency in making custodial sentences
Maybe essentially the most fascinating part of the report focuses on the understanding of members of the general public of phrases used to explain totally different jail sentences.
As most readers can be conscious, most offenders despatched to jail will serve at the very least half of their determinate sentence of imprisonment in the neighborhood. The precise share varies relying upon the character and seriousness of the offence of conviction. Till lately, most prisoners had been launched on the 50% level of the sentence. Below emergency laws launched final 12 months (generally known as SDS 40), many prisoners are launched on the 40% mark. The phrases used to explain customary determinate jail sentences could present a deceptive impression of what these sentences really entail. Certainly, the phrase customary determinate sentences is fairly opaque to anybody outdoors the CJS.
Survey respondents got a alternative of various methods of describing a jail sentence and so they expressed a robust choice for a clear description which separated out the custodial and non-custodial parts. That will imply, for instance, that as a substitute of passing a sentence of 5 years’ imprisonment, a choose would describing the sentence as certainly one of two years in jail and three on licence.
Equally, when passing a life sentence, most individuals thought the clearest means of expressing this was to incorporate the minimal time period that an offender would service. Within the survey query proven under, 91% respondents selected the correction possibility.
