Custody
32. We consider it appropriate that a majority of
adults convicted of robbery should be sentenced to custody. However,
some offenders will receive relatively short sentences. Whilst
custodial sentences may well be appropriate in many cases, the
Committee has in the past been critical of the effectiveness of
short sentences in promoting the rehabilitation of offenders.
It is all the more important therefore that the National Offender
Management Service takes further action to ensure that such sentences
do include appropriate measures of education, drug treatment,
prison work and effective resettlement.
33. In its report on Rehabilitation of Prisoners,
published in January 2005, our predecessors in the last Parliament
drew attention to the gross inadequacy of educational and rehabilitative
provision in our prisons.[22]
We support our predecessors' call for a major rethink of policy,
and redirection of resources, towards effective rehabilitative
work in prisons. We also recommend that the draft guideline on
robbery should require sentencers, when they explain their reasons
as to why a particular custodial sentence has been imposed, to
make an explicit statement as to the levels of education and drug
treatment that they expect to be provided within prison as a necessary
part of that sentence.
Deterrent effects of sentencing
34. We note that the new dangerousness provisions
are likely to affect a considerable number of people convicted
of robbery, as well as other violent and sexual offenders. They
provide an additional sentencing framework where significant risk
is identified. It is unclear as yet what their impact will be,
and we recommend that the Council commission research into this,
and into their deterrent effect. These provisions should be monitored,
and guidance from the Council, to complement the Court of Appeal
decisions, would be helpful .
35. We accept that there is evidence that exemplary
sentencing has no long-term deterrent effect.[23]
However, we believe it may well be the case that such sentencing
may have an effect at times when particular types of crime are
increasing. We feel this issue merits further consideration. We
recommend that the Council should commission research into the
deterrent effects both of exemplary sentencing and of the new
sentences for dangerous offenders.
18 Referral orders were introduced under the Youth
Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. Back
19
Youth Justice Board statistics: robbery sentencing outcomes-April
2004-March 2005 Back
20
Schedule 3 of the Act Back
21
Turnbull PJ, McSweeney T., Hough M., Webster R and Edmunds M."Drugs
Treatment and Testing Orders: Final Evaluation Report".Page
70-71 Home Office Research Study 212 Back
22
First Report of Session 2004-05, HC 193 Back
23
Von Hirsch, Bottoms, Burney, and Wikstrom: Criminal Deterrence
and Sentence Severity 1999 Back
