By The Howard League for Penal Reform

Young adults aged 18-25 are a distinct group who are still maturing as their brains continue to develop. They are overrepresented in the prison population in England and Wales, and in particular in the remand population where they make up 20 per cent of the population compared to around eight per cent in the general population. • The need for a distinct approach for young adults has been recognised in some parts of the criminal justice system. However, the focus tends to be on convicted young adults who are being or have been sentenced. More attention must be paid to young adults who are awaiting trial or sentencing. • Young adults are subject to the provisions set out in the Bail Act 1976, which apply to all adults. The framework on bail and remand should be amended to align with the recently strengthened tests on remand for children. A child cannot be remanded to custody if it is not ‘very likely’ that they will receive a custodial sentence for the offence for which they appear before the court. Where a child has a history of breach or offending whilst on bail they cannot be remanded to custody unless the breach or offending is ‘relevant in all the circumstances of the case’ and is ‘recent and significant’. There is a statutory duty on the court to consider a child’s best interests and welfare. These provisions, which aim to ensure that remand to custody is a last resort, do not apply to young adults. Turning 18 should not be a cliff edge. • The Crown Prosecution Service and judiciary should incorporate a greater recognition of maturity into relevant guidance to ensure that a distinct approach is taken to young adults from the outset. • Young adults should not be remanded without a court report which considers the impact on them of being remanded. If a young adult is to be remanded, sufficient time should be given to explaining remand decisions in court and young adults should be provided with a copy of the reasons for remand in writing. Data on the reasons for remand decisions should be published and disaggregated by age, ethnicity, religion and gender. • Remand is used disproportionately against Black, Brown and racially minoritised young adults. In June 2023, 26 per cent of remanded 18-20-year-olds and 18 per cent of remanded 21–25-year-olds were Black, compared to less than six per cent and five per cent respectively in the general population. Data on the number of people on remand should continue to be published and be disaggregated by age, ethnicity and religion. • Custodial time limits should only be extended in exceptional circumstances. Consideration should be given to the impact of an extended period of time in custody on a young adult in light of their age and ongoing maturational development, before time limits are extended. Data on the length of time people are held on remand should be published and should be disaggregated by age, ethnicity, religion and gender.  • Young adults benefit from lawyers who specialise in working with that age group and understand their specific needs. More should be done to support and encourage all young adults at risk of remand to have specialist legal representation. • Remanded young adults should have access to resettlement support in custody and more should be done to ensure the availability of good quality accommodation that meets young adults’ needs. • All prisons and courts should have a bail information service with bail information officers who are trained in and understand the specific needs of young adults. • Young adults who are remanded should be allocated a probation officer and keyworker in prison. • Young adults should have access to a meaningful daily regime, which includes education and employment, physical exercise and contact with family and friends. Unconvicted prisoners should have the number of visits they are legally entitled to. • Young adults should be supported to submit complaints, including escalating them to the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman as needed, and complaints should be responded to in a timely manner, in accordance with the national complaints policy. • Specialist mental health provision should be available to remanded young adults. • More must be done to identify careexperienced remanded young adults, including increased training for staff in prison on leaving care rights. Every prison holding remanded young adults should have a leaving care co-ordinator. Introduction - In Autumn 2022 the Howard League launched a project, supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, to better understand the experiences of remanded young adults. The project builds on previous work by the Howard League looking at the specific needs of young adults, including the role of maturity in the sentencing of young adults (Howard League, 2017), sentencing principles for young adults (Howard League, 2019a and b), and issues facing young adults in prison during Covid (Howard League, 2020). The project follows on from an earlier scoping study about young adults on remand supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust (Allen, 2021). That study found that there are strong arguments for developing a strategy to make remand arrangements better reflect the developing maturity of young adults. This briefing includes the experiences, voices and lessons to be learned from a group of remanded young adults aged 18-20 in a male Category B prison. It is informed by discussions with criminal justice professionals who work with remanded young adults in England and Wales and the Howard League’s work representing individual young adults across the prison estate through its specialist legal advice service. 

London: Howard League for Penal Reform,   2023. 13p.

By David Macdonald

Truth in Sentencing laws eliminates discretion in prison release. This decreases the incentive for rehabilitative effort among prisoners. I use a regression discontinuity design to exploit a change in these incentives created by the introduction of TIS in Arizona. Before prison, I found that sentences were reduced by 20% for TIS offenders. Further, I find that rule infractions increased by 22% to 55% and education enrolment fell by 24%. After release, I found offenders were 4.8 p.p. more likely to re-offend. I further find that recidivism and infraction effects are largest among drug and violent offenders. Finally, I show that the reduction in sentences resulted in a broad equalization of time served at the cutoff, which indicates that the removal of early-release incentives by TIS was the main mechanism driving results.

Unpublished paper, 2024. 84p.

By Anna Chalton, Dugan Dallimore and Paul McGorrery

Threat Offences in Victoria examines sentencing outcomes from 2015 to 2019 for five types of threat offences: threat to kill, threat to inflict serious injury, threat to destroy or damage property, threat to commit a sexual offence and threat to assault an emergency worker. It considers the offences co-sentenced alongside threat offences and the prior and subsequent offending rates for people sentenced for threat offending.

Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2021. 76p.

By Anna Chalton, Paul McGorrery, Zsombor Bathy, Dugan Dallimore, Paul Schollum and Octavian Simu

This report provides an in-depth analysis of how Victorian courts sentence stalking offences contrary to section 21A of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic). It considers the demographics of stalkers, the relationship between stalking offenders and victims, the sorts of stalking behaviours sentenced in Victorian courts and the sentencing outcomes for stalking offences. It also explores the link between stalking and family violence, the rate of reoffending among stalking offenders and the prevalence of stalking offences in rural and regional Victoria

Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2022. 104p.

By Paul McGorrery and Zsombor Bathy

An aggregate prison sentence involves a court imposing a single prison sentence on multiple criminal offences rather than a separate prison sentence on each offence. Table 1 illustrates the difference between aggregate and non-aggregate prison sentences. In the first example, the offender has received a single aggregate prison sentence of two years for aggravated burglary and theft. And in the second example, the offender has received separate non-aggregate prison sentences for the same two offences. The end result in both examples is identical – a two-year total sentence – but the method of arriving at that total sentence differs.

There are a number of advantages to aggregate sentencing. It can significantly improve court efficiency, especially in cases with a large number of charges. It can avoid the impression of ‘artificiality’ in the sentencing process, particularly if there is an impression that the court has determined the most appropriate total effective sentence that is proportionate to the overall offending, but then has adjusted the various charge-level sentences and cumulation orders to achieve that result. It can also reduce calculation errors that may occur when charge-level sentences are made wholly or partly cumulative or concurrent, again especially in cases with a large number of charges. Aggregate sentencing can also, however, reduce transparency in sentencing, limit courts’ ability to assess current sentencing practices and, as this paper shows, result in some offences receiving sentences in excess of their maximum penalty. There has, to date, been no examination of Victorian courts’ use of aggregate prison sentences since their introduction in 1997. The aims of this paper are to utilise court data to review trends in the use of aggregate prison sentences in Victoria, and to then consider issues arising from their use.

Melbourne: Advisory Sentencing Council (VIC), 2023. 28p.

By Paul McGorrery and Felicity Stewart

Adjourned undertakings perform a critical role in the Victorian criminal justice system. They are a low-end community order that requires the offender to be of good behaviour for a certain period of time, and they may also require the offender to comply with certain additional conditions, such as making a charitable donation or participating in a rehabilitation program. They are primarily designed to provide a response to less serious offending, to first-time offenders, to vulnerable offenders or even to serious offending if there are extraordinary circumstances. Because of this broad scope, adjourned undertakings are highly prevalent. In 2019 alone, there were over 17,000 adjourned undertakings imposed, mostly in the Magistrates’ Court, making up 18% of all sentencing outcomes in adult courts that year. Yet despite the importance and prevalence of adjourned undertakings, this project has been the first detailed examination of their use since their introduction in 1985. In that context, this report follows the consultation paper we published in August 2022 and presents 26 recommendations for reforms to adjourned undertakings and related orders. Those recommendations are a product of extensive data analysis, legal research and consultation over the last two years. Our overarching aim in making those recommendations is to refine a sentencing order that is already held in high regard by those who work in Victoria’s criminal justice system. Adjourned undertakings are a highly flexible and useful order, and we do not want to fix what isn’t broken or cause unintended consequences. With that in mind, we have grouped our recommendations according to certain themes.

Melbourne: The Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2023. 102p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

EDITED BY Hyman Gross and Andrew von Hirsch

Sentencing, edited by Hyman Gross and Andrew von Hirsch, is a comprehensive collection of essays exploring various aspects of sentencing practices. This edited volume delves into the complexities of sentencing theory, policy, and reform, offering diverse perspectives from leading experts in the field. Whether you are a legal scholar, practitioner, or student, this book provides valuable insights into the challenges and debates surrounding sentencing in modern criminal justice systems.

New York / Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1981. 401p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

HERBERT L. PACKER

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: THIS Is A BOOk about law and some related subjects; but it is not a specialized book, and I hope that it will be read by people who are not specialists. It is a book about a social problem that has an important legal dimension: the problem of trying to control antisocial behavior by imposing punishment on people found guilty of violating rules of conduct called criminal statutes. This device I shall call the criminal sanction. The rhetorical question that this book poses is: how can we tell what the criminal sanction is good for? Let us hypothesize the existence of a rational lawmaker-a man who stops, looks, and listens before he legislates. What kinds of questions should he ask before deciding that a certain kind of conduct (bank robbery, income tax evasion, marijuana use) ought to be subjected to the criminal sanction?

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, STANFORD, CALIFORNIA. 1968. 389p.

By Ryan Cotter

This study, the seventh in the recidivism series, examines the relationship between length of incarceration and recidivism. In 2020, the Commission published its initial comprehensive study on length of incarceration and recidivism. In that study, which examined offenders released in 2005, the Commission found that federal offenders receiving sentences of more than 60 months were less likely to recidivate compared to a similar group of offenders receiving shorter sentences. This study replicates the prior analysis, however, it examines a more current cohort of federal offenders released in 2010. This study examines the relationship between length of incarceration and recidivism, specifically exploring three potential relationships that may exist: incarceration as having a deterrent effect, a criminogenic effect, or no effect on recidivism.

Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission, 2022. 56p.