§ Mr. Kilroy-Silkasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what use has been made to date of partly suspended sentences since the relevant legislation was amended by the Criminal Justice Act 1982; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. MellorSection 30 of the Criminal Justice Act 1982, which was implemented on 31 January 1983, extended the range of sentences of immediate imprisonment which could be partly suspended to include those from three months to two years. In the remainder of 1983 an average of about 320 persons a month were received into prison department establishments with a partly suspended sentence of imprisonment. This represented about 13 per cent. of all receptions in this period of adults whose sentence of immediate imprisonment was in the range which may be partly suspended. About 950 persons were received in the fourth quarter of 1983 with a partly suspended sentence of imprisonment, compared with 600 in the corresponding quarter of 1982, the last calendar quarter before the extension of the power. The proportion66W of the total sentence which was suspended was usually a half, two thirds or three quarters of the total sentence length; overall in the third quarter of 1983 it averaged about 60 per cent of the total sentence length.
It is difficult to estimate the effect of the use of partly suspended sentences on the size of the prison population because of uncertainty about the form and length of sentence which they replaced. Information on sentencing in the fourth quarter of 1982 suggests that about a half of the partly suspended sentences imposed in that quarter replaced an unsuspended sentence of imprisonment; preliminary information for 1983 suggests that in that year a higher proportion of partly suspended sentences were probably being given in place of unsuspended imprisonment. On the basis of experience so far, and on the assumption total sentence lengths are not significantly altered, a reduction in the prison population of the order of several hundred could eventually result from the availability of partly suspended sentences. Further information on the use of partly suspended sentences in 1983 will be included in "Prison Statistics, England and Wales" and "Criminal Statistics, England and Wales", which will be published later this year.