Summary
Nacro provided a briefing looking in detail at the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill. This briefing was provided to the House of Lords.
We support a number of measures within the Bill, including:
- The commitment to criminal record disclosure reform
- The piloting of problem-solving courts
- Increasing the threshold for custodial remand of children
However, we are very concerned that a number of the measures in the Bill represent an inflation of sentence lengths, which has characterised much of the approach to justice policy in recent decades. Increasing sentence length lacks an evidence base that demonstrates that it is either an effective deterrent or effective at preventing further offending (and is contrary to much of the evidence that does exist), whilst disproportionately impacting on Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups.