Issue 392  5th April 2025

The Sentencing Council has caved to pressure and suspended plans for new guidelines which could have led to different sentences depending on age, sex and ethnicity, as ministers prepare to force through a law to overturn proposals. The climbdown – hours before the guidance would have come into force – comes after a standoff with the Ministry of Justice which will use emergency legislation to override the guidelines, which had provoked claims of a “two-tier” justice system...

The Sentencing Council confirmed after a meeting with Mahmood on Monday that it “would not introduce a guideline when there is a draft bill due for imminent introduction that would make it unlawful. On that basis, the council, an independent statutory body, has chosen to delay the in-force date of the guideline pending such legislation taking effect”...

The suspension comes at the end of a breakdown in relations between Mahmood and the Sentencing Council. After the guidance was first published, Mahmood wrote to the chair of the council, Lord Justice Davis, calling for the change to be scrapped and insisting there would “never be a two-tier sentencing approach under my watch”. Davis had suggested he would defy that pressure on Friday, however, saying the council had concluded “the guideline did not require revision” and blaming a “widespread misunderstanding” for the backlash...

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said she will review the role of the Sentencing Council following a "two-tier" justice row over its latest guidelines. Labour and the Conservatives have criticised the council's plan to advise judges in England and Wales to seek extra information before deciding how to punish offenders from certain minority groups. The guidelines have now been abandoned after ministers tabled an emergency law to override them on Tuesday. But Mahmood also told MPs she would launch a review of the "proper role" of the council and how it makes guidelines, to begin in the coming months...

Mahmood will also pilot the Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence reports) Bill through Parliament after it was published on Tuesday. If passed, the bill would prevent future sentencing guidelines about pre-sentence reports "framed by reference to different personal characteristics of an offender"...

Veteran Labour MP Dianne Abbott said she was "astonished" that Mahmood thought judges could be swayed by "guidelines in relation to how they sentence black and brown defendants". "Repeated statistical analysis has demonstrated what some of us consider to be unfairness in relation to black and brown people, and the criminal justice system," she said. Abbott also warned against ministers interfering with the courts. "This is not the United States, our political system and our judicial system are entirely separate," she said.

For the first time, victims from across England and Wales will be able to apply to observe private Parole Board hearings held to decide if a prisoner is safe to be released. It will let victims see first-hand how offenders are held accountable for their crimes, their subsequent behaviour in prison and their work to prove they can live law-abiding lives if released. A pilot in the South West of England and Greater Manchester found victims were reassured to see the level of scrutiny that prisoners are put under before any decision to release them is made. It is hoped, therefore, that these changes will provide more victims with a greater understanding of the decisions made by the Parole Board while ensuring they feel more involved in the process...

Victims who are part of the Victim Contact Scheme will apply to the Parole Board to attend hearings with the help of their victim liaison officer and those who are successful in applying will observe remotely so they don’t have to sit with the perpetrator. They will then be provided with in-person support during the hearing and victims will be directed towards additional support following the proceedings, such as counselling, if necessary...

The UK and Vietnam are joining forces to clamp down on human trafficking by committing to a joint action plan. The agreement was signed yesterday, 31 March, at the Border Security Summit on Organised Immigration Crime in London by the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Vietnam Minister for Public Security General Luong Tam Quang. The agreement commits both countries to stop traffickers from exploiting vulnerable people by discouraging dangerous journeys, enhancing information sharing and co-ordinating efforts to disrupt trafficking. It builds on a memorandum of understanding signed by the 2 countries in 2018...

Delivery of the joint action plan is supported by up to £1 million of funding over the next year through the Home Office Modern Slavery Fund. Since 2018 the UK has invested over £7 million to strengthen Vietnam’s anti-trafficking response through the Modern Slavery Fund which has identified 720 victims of trafficking and migrants in vulnerable situations, reached over 7 million people with awareness campaigns and educated 1,936 aspiring migrants to the risks of human trafficking.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission has launched a case studies hub to help ‘inform potential applicants’ about the organisation’s work, test and processes. Case studies will be published in the hub fortnightly. Each article will link to individual case studies from the CCRC’s case library, which launched last September and lists all referrals the CCRC has made since 1997, when it started its work. Current articles cover unreliable confession cases, asylum and immigration investigations and referrals of imprisonment for public protection sentences.

A CCRC spokesperson said: ‘These thematic case studies will help people understand more fully the range of the work carried out by our team, and the basis on which our many hundreds of referrals have been made. We hope this will assist potential applicants and support our work in finding and investigating possible miscarriages of justice.’