The Ministry of Justice has set out plans to double the maximum sentence that magistrates can impose on offenders in a bid to take pressure off higher-tier courts by reducing the backlog of cases waiting to be heard there.
As the lowest tier of the criminal-justice system, magistrates courts typically deal with minor offences. They can only deliver jail sentences of up to six months for an individual crime, or 12 months for multiple offences.
More serious crimes get referred to crown courts, where jury trials are held and judges have full sentencing powers – including the ability to hand down life sentences. Crimes such as murder are always sentenced at crown court, although some offences can be dealt with in either tier of the courts system.
Under measures announced yesterday, the government will allow magistrates courts to hand down sentences of up to 12 months in duration for an individual offence – meaning a broader range of cases can be sentenced by magistrates. The MoJ said the move would save up to 2,000 days of crown court time.
The new regime echoes measures introduced by the Johnson government in 2022, and which remained in force until March last year. The MoJ said the increased sentencing powers for magistrates would come into effect on November 18.
In May this year the National Audit Office said there was a backlog of 67,573 cases in the crown courts, and that the then government's ambition to reduce the figure to 53,000 by March next year was "no longer achievable".
The report said the number of outstanding cases was 78% higher than it had been at the end of 2019 and 11% higher than it had been at the end of 2021 – when the nation was largely over the worst of the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said the new sentencing regime would mean more victims of crime got the justice they deserved sooner than would otherwise be the case.
"The changes, the latest step in the government’s plans to tackle the inherited crisis in our prisons, will allow magistrates to hand-down prison sentences of up to a year," she said. "This will help to tackle the record remand population in jails and address the crown court backlog, also at a historic high."
The MoJ said that around 17,000 people are currently in prison on remand, meaning that they are either waiting for their trial to take place or waiting to be sentenced post-conviction.
It added that the record number of remand prisoners was a "key factor" in the broader prison-capacity crisis, because remand prisoners could only be held in "reception prisons" where the department said the lack of cell space was "most acute".
Reception prisons are where some of the nation's most dangerous offenders are held and they are also where all newly-convicted prisoners begin their sentences.
Last month, new early-release guidance permitting most offenders to be freed from prison after serving just 40% of their sentences came into effect with the aim of creating fresh capacity as the secure estate came dangerously close to running out of space.
Police chiefs advised then-prime minister Rishi Sunak to introduce the measure ahead of July's general election to avoid public safety being compromised. However he disregarded the advice. Prison governors made a similar call in early July.
Just one week after the election, Mahmood confirmed that the early-release tweak was being activated.
"This is not a change that we wanted to make," she said. "It was the only option on the table because the alternative would have seen the total collapse of the criminal justice system in this country.
"We would have seen the breakdown of law and order because courts would not have been able to conduct trials and the police would not have been able to make arrests and that’s not something that that I was prepared to sit back and allow to happen."
As of September 6, the prison population of England and Wales was 88,521 at a time when "total useable capacity" in the system was 89,619.
The move to implement "standard determinate sentence 40", effectively allowing some categories of offender to be eligible for automatic release after serving just 40% of their sentence, took effect on September 10.
Up to 5,500 prisoners were exptected to have benefitted from early release under SDS40 by the end of this month.