Types Of Sentences

There are currently of sentence types which have been imposed upon Prisoners but which ever way they will have been either sentenced under the Criminal Justice Act 1991 known as the 'old' regime or under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, known as the new regime.

To make things clearer we have broken the regimes down, as people can and do often get confused.

Under the Criminal Justice Act 1991 there were two types of prison sentence that the Courts would impose. These were sentences under  4 years, of which only half was served in Prison but  could be further reduced if they were eligible for Home Detention Curfew and sentences over 4 years  were  2/3 had to be served, but at the ½ way  stage could be eligible for release under the Parole system, this would be a paper application. If the sentence was over 15 years there was also a separate regime.

There are not many sentences nowadays under the old regime.

The changes made by the 2003 Act has done away with the old complex system and simplified the process of sentencing, so that all prisoners know what the sentence is and how long they have to serve.

If the offences are committed on or after the 4th April 2005 they will receive one of the following sentences:

An extended sentence can be imposed if the offence committed was sexual or violent in nature where the statutory maximum is less than 10 years. The court must find that the offender is a significant risk of causing further such offences before such a sentence can be imposed. This sentence would comprise a custodial period followed by a period on licence. The individual would not be released automatically until the end of the custodial period. In these cases individuals must apply for release on parole at the half way stage of their custodial periods. The matter would then be considered by the Parole Board using the procedure detailed above. Once released the individual would then remain on licence until the end of the entire extended sentence.

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