Downing Street Says » Sex Offenders sentencing

» Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Sex Offenders sentencing

Asked if the Prime Minister thought that sex offenders sentences should be cut, the PMOS said that in terms of sentence guidelines, as the PMOS understood it, they had not yet been published, therefore he did not want to comment on something that was still only in draft form. The PMOS said, however, that Government policy was to ensure that everything was done to encourage people to report sexual offences, rather than discourage them, and that was the criteria which we would apply. The PMOS also pointed out that we had introduced the ability to allow for offenders convicted of specific sexual offences, including rape, to remain in prison indefinitely until the level of risk to the public had been assessed as manageable. That did mean that in certain cases, if the level of risk could not be assessed as acceptable, people may never be released, so there was that fall-back. The PMOS said that primary basis by which we judged anything in this area was to encourage people to report offences, rather than to discourage them.

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