Don’t Believe All You Read In The Newspapers

I was somewhat surprised to read a report in the Daily Express (Friday 4th March) that only 1 in 5 of those found in possession of a knife were sent to prison.
The report says that 31% received a community sentence; 13% a suspended sentence and 21% a police caution.
This seems to contradict the above headline as that leaves 35% unaccounted for, who presumably did go to prison, and 35% is over a third, not 1 in 5!

In the case of the 13% who received a suspended sentence, the court obviously found that the offence was so serious that it merited a prison sentence, but for reasons we can’t know decided to suspend the sentence, and the 21% who received a police caution are outside the court’s jurisdiction, which leaves 31% who received a community sentence.

Now given that the starting point in the Sentencing Guidelines are that the lowest level of possession of a knife should result in a prison sentence, and that courts should follow these guidelines unless there are exceptional reasons for not doing so, the 31% who received a non-custodial sentence is bad enough but it is a matter for the courts and certainly not, as the Express contended, the fault of the government and the current liberal Justice Secretary.

The government have given the courts the power, and the higher courts the direction, to imprison those caught in possession of a knife and it is up to the courts to use those powers wisely. There will always be exceptional circumstances in all types of cases where a deviation from the guidelines is justified, I only hope that was the case for all those where the court imposed a community penalty for carrying a knife.