By Jay Gormley, Gabrielle Watson, Gavin Dingwall, Jade Mouton, Jonathan Bild and Julian Roberts

Firearms offences are statistically rare yet in light of their potential for harm cause considerable public concern. The offences vary greatly in terms of their nature and possible sentences. As a result, the sentencing exercise is often complex. Courts must weigh the harm caused, intended, or which was reasonably foreseeable, as well as the culpability of the individual offender. Quantifying the harm caused can be particularly challenging where a firearms offence does not have an identifiable victim as firearms offences are inherently potentially harmful. An additional complexity arises in a small number of serious gun crimes which carry a mandatory minimum sentence. When sentencing these offences, the court must also consider whether exceptional circumstances may justify the imposition of a sentence which falls below the statutory minimum. This report examines research and sentencing guidance relating to firearms offences. These offences include a range of crimes varying in seriousness, although most create a risk of serious harm or death. We conducted a literature review of the social and socio-legal databases to uncover relevant publications for the period 2000-2024. As will be seen, most of the scholarship in the area focuses on restricting access to firearms rather than punishing offenders convicted of firearms offences. Within the more restricted domain of sentencing, the majority of publications address mandatory sentencing as a response to gun crime. Most Western nations have introduced mandatory minimum sentences of imprisonment for the more serious forms of gun crime. The project also conducted a review of the public opinion literature to seek any research exploring public knowledge of, and attitudes towards, sentencing for firearms offences. Understanding public opinion is recognised as a relevant consideration by sentencing commissions and councils around the world. 3. With respect to guidance, England and Wales is the only relevant comparator jurisdiction. While gun crime is a near-universal problem, differences in the definition of offences – and laws around gun ownership – makes it inappropriate to compare sentencing guidance or trends with the United States. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are more comparable countries, but none of these operate formal sentencing guidelines. Many of the firearms offences in Scotland also exist in England and Wales and stem from the same UK legislation. In addition, courts in England and Wales and Scotland also employ sentencing guidelines. These follow a similar step by step approach (albeit with important differences). For these reasons, we restrict our comparisons to England and Wales. Contents of the Volume Chapter 1 Firearms Offences: This chapter identifies the offences under consideration, including statistics on the prevalence of the offences, and summarises the current legal framework for sentencing these offences. Chapter 2 Firearms Offenders and Associated Offences: This chapter explores the connection between firearms offences and other violent crime. It addresses the way that the assessment of risk interacts with sentencing for firearms offences and the indicators of further or more serious offending (such as homicide). Finally, it discusses the background of offenders and the intersection between minority ethnic backgrounds and sentencing for firearms offences. Chapter 3 Sentencing Guidance for Firearms Offences: This chapter reviews the principles and purposes of the sentencing of firearms offences and also discusses the sentencing guidelines for firearms offences issued by the Sentencing Council for England and Wales. Chapter 4 Research on Sentencing Responses to Firearms Offences: The final chapter summarises findings from research on the sentencing of firearms offences. The chapter also discusses the limited research exploring public attitudes to sentencing offenders convicted of firearms offences.

Edinburgh: Scottish Sentencing Council, 2025. 65p.

Chairman, Rt. Hon. David Gauke

This review of sentencing is tasked with a comprehensive re-evaluation of the sentencing framework in England and Wales, to ensure we are never again in a position where the country has more prisoners than prison places. This report – Part 1 of the Independent Sentencing Review’s conclusions – outlines the prison population challenge in figures, provides an explanation of why and how we got here, and advocates for an approach rooted in all statutory principles of sentencing and public service reform. Chapter one of this report examines trends in custody and the capacity pressures faced by HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), which have brought the system dangerously close to collapse. At the end of 2024, over 85,000 individuals were held in the adult prison estate; these numbers undeniably exceed the population the system is designed to accommodate. The total prison population has grown by over 40,000 people since 1993, with adults sentenced for indictable offences now serving longer sentences. England and Wales also have one of the highest prison population rates in Western Europe. The probation service is similarly stretched: by September 2024, 240,497 individuals were under probation supervision, over 100,000 more than in 1993. Prison demand is expected to grow by an average of 3,000 people a year– the equivalent of building two large prisons per year. Without further government action, the prison population could reach up to 112,300 prisoners by November 2032.8 Chapter two summarises the drivers behind the increase in the use and length of custody. It concludes that the increase in the prison and probation population is not the consequence of a considered strategy as the most effective measure to reduce crime. Nor can it be explained by rising crime levels. In fact, latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) showed there has been an overall general decline in incidents of headline crime since 2017. The increase has been the result of many decisions made by successive governments and a “tough on crime” narrative that has focused primarily on punishment – understood as incarceration and longer sentences – on occasion responding to embedded misunderstandings about sentencing and high-profile individual cases. In tandem, there has been an underinvestment in probation and other alternatives that can provide rehabilitation and reduce reoffending. Chapter three outlines the need for change, and advocates for a system rooted in all the current statutory principles of sentencing. The emphasis on longer-term imprisonment has placed significant strain on the system, forcing successive governments to adopt costly and high-risk emergency measures. These have attempted to both increase short-term capacity (often in ways which are expensive and risky) and reduce demand by expediting the release of prisoners, such as the measures we saw in the autumn of 2024 when prisoners were released 40 per cent (as opposed to 50 per cent) of the way through their sentence. This incoherent approach also comes at a fiscal cost: new prison programmes are estimated to cost between £9.4 billion and £10.1 billion.10 The piecemeal and unstrategic manner in which sentence lengths have increased in recent decades has meant that there has been insufficient consideration of all of the statutory aims of sentencing: punishment, crime reduction, reform and rehabilitation, public protection and reparation. Punishment is an important aim for the criminal justice system and prison plays a vital role in delivering punishment. But too often decision making has been based on an approach that punishment is all that matters, and that the only form of punishment that counts is imprisonment.

Rather than approach sentencing policy based on the evidence of what is likely to be most effective in reducing crime and reducing reoffending, too often the knee-jerk response has been to increase sentence lengths as a demonstration of government action.

London: Miniarey od Juarixw2025. 65p.

By Ben Finholt

For decades, the North Carolina Supreme Court—like many other state supreme courts—largely ignored its own state constitution’s ban on harsh criminal punishments and deferred entirely to federal case law on the constitutional limits of excessive sentences. The result has been near-total deference to the state legislature and a discriminatory mass incarceration crisis that has ballooned without meaningful constitutional checks.

This approach has been a serious mistake of constitutional law. As Justice Harry Martin once noted, “the Constitution of North Carolina . . . is the people's timeless shield against encroachment on their civil rights,” and it provides uniquely broad protections of civil rights and personal liberty. Yet sentencing law has been the exception, despite a specific provision that bans “cruel or unusual punishments,” and whose text and original meaning are distinct from the Eighth Amendment.

The North Carolina Supreme Court finally revived this clause, Article I, Section 27, in two recent cases involving children sentenced to serve decades, recognizing that it should not be interpreted in lockstep with its federal counterpart. This Article argues that these cases provide a crucial moment of doctrinal clarity and opportunity to articulate the independent meaning of Section 27 and unleash its power as an essential tool in the urgent project of dismantling mass incarceration. While previous scholarship has noted that state analogs to th

e Eighth Amendment can and should bear their own independent meaning, this Article provides a full analysis of Section 27 specifically, looking to its text and history, related constitutional provisions, and other factors to show that it provides broader protections against excessive punishments than does current Eighth Amendment case law. This Article also sketches a doctrinal framework that state courts can apply in all challenges to excessive punishment, not just those involving children.

Finally, the Article places this constitutional analysis in the specific context of North Carolina’s criminal legal system, explaining how other mechanisms of reducing needless incarceration have proven wholly inadequate.

Duke Law School Public Law & Legal Theory Series No. 2023, 49p.

By Rachel Monaghan and Bianca Slocombe 

  : Few studies have examined the sentencing outcomes of individuals convicted of terrorism or violent extremism-related offences in the United Kingdom (UK). Home Office data can tell us the number of persons arrested for terrorist-related activity and subsequent outcomes, such as charges and convictions by legislation, but this data does not provide a complete picture of the prosecution landscape for extremist actors in the UK. This is due in part to the existence of three distinct legal jurisdictions (England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) and also to differences in the types of data collected and counting practices in operation. Moreover, the official data available publicly are only summary statistics, with no separate data for Scotland. This article addresses this research gap in our knowledge of the prosecution landscape for extremist actors in the UK by utilising data from an original dataset compiled by the research team from open sources on the sentencing outcomes of individuals (n=809) convicted of terrorism, terrorism-related, and violent extremism offences over a 21- year period (April 2001-March 2022). The analysis of this dataset has allowed us to test a range of hypotheses in relation to not only motivation but also offence type, gender, age, co-defendants and having multiple counts (i.e. facing multiple charges). Limitations of the study are also discussed.  

Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume XVIII, Issue 4 December 2024  

By The Council on Criminal Justice

As cities across the nation grapple with effective responses to increases in violent crime, a task force co-chaired by former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy today released a report outlining a comprehensive approach for the use of lengthy prison sentences in the United States.

The report, How Long is Long Enough?, presents 14 recommendations to enhance judicial discretion in sentencing, promote individual and system accountability, reduce racial and ethnic disparities, better serve victims of crime, and increase public safety. Defining long sentences as prison terms of 10 years or longer, the panel’s proposals include:

Shifting savings from reductions in the use of long prison sentences to programs that prevent violence and address the trauma it causes individuals, families, and communities (Recommendation 1).

Allowing judges to consider all relevant facts and circumstances when imposing a long sentence, and requiring that sentencing enhancements based on criminal history are driven by individualized assessments of risk and other factors (Recommendations 6 and 8)

Providing selective “second look” sentence review opportunities and expanding access to sentence-reduction credits (Recommendations 11 and 12)

Focusing penalties in drug cases on a person’s role in a trafficking organization, rather than the amount of drug involved, (Recommendation 7)

Reducing recidivism by providing behavioral health services and other rehabilitative living conditions and opportunities in prison (Recommendations 3 and 13)

Strengthening services for all crime victims and survivors by enforcing victims’ rights, removing barriers to services, and creating restorative justice opportunities (Recommendations 2, 4, and 9)

“Some may wonder, why would we even discuss the nation’s use of long prison sentences now, amid a rise in homicide rates and legitimate public concern about public safety? Because this is exactly the time to examine what will actually make our communities safer and our system more just,” Yates and Gowdy said in a joint statement accompanying the report. “When crime rates increase, so do calls for stiffer sentencing, often without regard to the effectiveness or fairness of those sentences. Criminal justice policy should be based on facts and evidence, not rhetoric and emotion, and we should be laser-focused on strategies that make the most effective use of our limited resources.”

The report is the product of a year-long analysis by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) Task Force on Long Sentences, which includes 16 members representing a broad range of experience and perspectives, from crime victims and survivors to formerly incarcerated people, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, courts, and corrections. The panel examined the effects of long sentences on the criminal justice system and the populations it serves, including victims as well as people in prison, their families, and correctional staff.

Drawing on sentencing data and research, including a series of reports prepared for the Task Force, the sweeping recommendations offer a comprehensive blueprint for action on a complex and polarizing topic. According to an updated analysis by CCJ, 63% of people in state prison in 2020 were serving a sentence of 10 or more years, up from 46% in 2005, a shift due largely to a decline in people serving shorter terms. During the same period, the gap between Black and White people receiving long terms widened, from half a percentage point to 4 percentage points. Though murder defendants were the most likely to receive a long sentence, drug offenses accounted for the largest share (20%) of those admitted to prison to serve 10 or more years.

“Our nation’s reliance on long sentences as a response to violence requires us to wrestle with highly challenging questions about the relationship between crime, punishment, and public safety,” Task Force Director John Maki said. “Through their painstaking deliberations, our members rose to the challenge and produced a set of recommendations that recognize our need to advance public safety while respecting the humanity of those most affected by long prison terms.”

Washington DC: Council on Criminal Justice, 2023. 39p.