PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
(29 November 2024)

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) standard delivery, (b) fast delivery, and (c) oral pre-sentence reports have been produced in (i) Wales and (ii) England in each of the last 10 years.

Asked by:
Liz Saville Roberts (Plaid Cymru)

Pre-sentence reports (PSRs) provide an expert assessment of the nature and causes of the offender's behaviour, the risk the offender poses and to whom, as well as an independent recommendation of the options available to support the independent judiciary in deciding the appropriate sentence. The decision on whether to direct the preparation of a PSR and any adjournment to produce that report is, along with the sentence itself, a matter for the independent judiciary. Since 2014, the following numbers of PSRs have been produced in Wales and England:

Wales

Type	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
Wales total	10,470	10,385	9,297	8,134	7,915	7,357	6,097	6,221	5,943	6,488
Standard Delivery PSR	1,230	976	603	425	413	438	433	520	442	585
Fast Delivery PSR written	4,942	5,593	4,257	4,004	3,903	2,796	2,882	3,306	3,339	3,680
Fast Delivery PSR oral	4,298	3,816	4,437	3,705	3,599	4,123	2,782	2,395	2,162	2,223

England

Type	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
England total	131,462	148,893	138,999	121,508	105,313	95,647	61,980	82,436	77,297	84,880
Standard Delivery PSR	32,523	24,774	8,993	4,314	3,292	2,848	2,132	3,028	3,119	4,374
Fast Delivery PSR written	64,078	76,934	58,720	45,411	39,419	41,833	39,970	59,217	55,036	61,979
Fast Delivery PSR oral	34,861	47,185	71,286	71,783	62,602	50,966	19,878	20,191	19,142	18,527

1. Excludes breach, deferred sentence and court review reports (for further details please see the guide to offender management statistics, available at: Offender management statistics quarterly - GOV.UK).

2. Between April and June 2020, the number of cases processed at the criminal courts was substantially reduced as a result of the operational restrictions that were put in place on 23 March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the impact of these operational restrictions continued into subsequent periods, the figures in more recent periods have recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

3. The figures for England include a handful of pre-sentence reports prepared by the National Security Division (NSD), which was introduced in 2021 under the Probation Reform Programme and is specifically tasked with the enhanced monitoring of terrorists, serious organised criminals and very high-risk offenders.

Data quality: The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large-scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Data source: National Delius case management system

Information on the numbers of PSRs for England and Wales is published as part of the Ministry of Justice’s official statistics available at: Offender management statistics quarterly - GOV.UK.

Answered by:
()

1 January 1970