Independent Sentencing Review: History and Trends in Sentencing

This paper is intended to provide an explanation for why the UK prison system has reached crisis point. The prison population has grown very rapidly over the last 30 years, with the principal cause of this increase due to prison sentences being lengthened substantially by successive governments. It is an approach that has emphasised the importance of punishment understood primarily as incarceration – an important aspect of sentencing policy – but has been insufficiently focused on the most effective ways to reduce crime.

This paper sets out the details of the increase in prison population, the drivers for longer prison sentences and examples of places where the trend of an ever-growing prison population has been reversed while seeing crime fall.

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