The average length of a prison sentence for all offences in England and Wales was 20.9 months in 2023, compared with 11.4 months in the year 2000.

In 2023, defendants in child-only trafficking cases in the United States received an average sentence of 169 months in prison. Defendents in trafficking cases involving adults only received an average sentence of 131 months in that same year.

In December 2024, the average legally binding prison sentence in Poland, excluding life imprisonment and a sentence of 25 years imprisonment, amounted to 46 months (3 years and 10 months).

From 2005 to 2019, the median prison sentence for defendants sentenced to prison time for hate crimes under the Hate Crime Prevention Act in the United States was 71 months. On the other hand, the median prison sentence for defendants sentenced for fair housing hate crimes was 15 months.

In 2019, the average aggregate sentence length for female prisoners in Australia was 27 months. During that same year, the average aggregate sentence length for male prisoners in Australia was around 39 months.

This study evaluated the Violent Offender Incarceration/Truth-in-Sentencing (VOI/TIS) incentive grant program enacted in 1994. The program provided grants to states to be used to increase the capacity of state correctional systems to confine serious and violent offenders. This national evaluation addressed four broad areas: (1) How had the federal government implemented the law? How much money had been made available and what were the criteria for disbursement? (2) How had the states reacted legislatively to the law? Did states adopt truth-in-sentencing or statutes having equivalent effect? (3) How had the state VOI/TIS money been spent and for what? How much did it increased prison capacities? (4) Did the law increase the number of admissions, length of sentences, and terms served for violent offenders? In addition to these four major areas, the study looked at related areas of interest, such as the impact of VOI/TIS and other "get tough" legislation on prosecutorial and judicial attitudes, policies, and practices. It also examined state spending on corrections, particularly for construction. The researchers collaborated with the American Correctional Association (ACA), the American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI), and the Justice Management Institute (JMI) to conduct special surveys among state correctional officials, prosecutors, and judges. The ACA surveyed state departments of correction in the summer of 1998. States were asked to indicate the extent of changes in a number of prison operations and activities since 1996, when VOI/TIS funds became available. In the summer of 1999 the APRI surveyed prosecutors nationwide to ascertain their perceptions of the effects of "get tough" legislation (including TIS) on a number of dimensions. In the fall of 1999, the JMI surveyed judges nationwide on their impressions of the effectiveness of several "get tough" measures in their states, including VOI/TIS. In Part 1, American Correctional Association Survey Data, state correction departments were questioned on the amount of VOI/TIS funds spent by their state since 1996, number of beds added using VOI/TIS funds and in what types of facilities, how VOI/TIS funds were used to increase number of beds, average prison sentences in 1993 and 1998 for different types of offenses, average time actually served in 1993 and 1998 for those offenses, the effects of VOI/TIS on prison and jail admissions for different types of offenders, and its effects on the composition of the prison population, prison inmate activities and programs, prison staffing, and prison operations. In Part 2, American Prosecutors Research Institute Survey Data, prosecutors were questioned about what "get tough" policies their states had enacted, the efficacy of "get tough" policies in achieving their goals, whether these policies had unanticipated or negative consequences, expected results of these policies, the percentage of cases to which these policies applied, the extent to which these policies had helped accomplish their office's goals, the effects of "get tough" policies on budget and resources, sentences and time actually served, and the criminal justice process, the size of their jurisdiction, and the number of staff in their office. In Part 3, Justice Management Institute Survey Data, judges were questioned about whether their state had enacted "get tough" policies in the past ten years, what kinds of policies were adopted, their effect on the efficiency of case processing, the formal positions of the Judicial Council and Judges Association on the policies, whether the respondent or other judges had input into the policies, how likely "get tough" policies were to achieve certain goals, what results the respondent expected from the policies, the impact of the policies on the criminal justice process, years experience on the bench, the percentage of their caseload that involved criminal cases, whether they handled civil, family law/domestic relations, or juvenile cases, and the population of their jurisdiction.

In 2023/24 the average custodial sentence length for sexual offences in England and Wales was 69.5 months, or just over five years, the most of any broad offence type in that year. Other crimes that carried high prison sentences were robbery offences at 45.2 months, and drug offences at 41.4 months. The average length of a prison sentence for all offences in 2024 was 22.5 months, while the offences that carried the shortest sentence lengths were motoring offences. Court backlog a major concern The number of crown court cases awaiting trial in England and Wales reached a high of over 62,700 cases in 2022, almost double the number of outstanding cases in 2019. Although the number of new crown court cases has actually been declining, the courts have struggled to keep pace by closing existing cases, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a consequence of these pressures, the amount of time between a criminal offence taking place and the conclusion of the case has also risen. In 2014, it took an average of 412 days for an offence to reach a conclusion in the courts, with this rising to 697 days by 2021. The UK prison system The prison population of the United Kingdom was estimated to number approximately 92,800 people, as of 2023, the vast majority of which were in England and Wales. In 2021/22, the average cost of a prison place in England and Wales was estimated at 46,696 British pounds, compared with 48,162 pounds in the previous financial year. Of the various prisons across UK jurisdictions the largest one in terms of capacity was HMS Oakwood in the West Midlands, which had a prison population of 2,087 in 2023. Despite the construction of relatively new prisons such as Oakwood, prison overcrowding has increased recently. In September 2023, for example, there were just 768 spare prison places in England and Wales compared with almost 2,600 in April 2022.

This paper presents the first analysis of ethnic discrimination in sentencing patterns in the People's Republic of China, focusing on drug cases in Yunnan province. We posit the ``problem minority" hypothesis, which holds that discrimination in an authoritarian system emerges when an ethnic group becomes associated with behavior that generates social instability. On average, minority defendants in Yunnan receive sentences that are about 2.1 to 7.5 months longer than Han defendants that have committed similar drug crimes. Further analysis of data from all provinces reveals that this bias is largest for groups heavily involved in the drug trade, and in provinces with significant minority populations and drugs.

Average number of days from arrest to sentence (three-month rolling averages) for persistent young offenders Source: Ministry of Justice (MoJ) Publisher: Ministry of Justice Geographies: Police Force Area Geographic coverage: England and Wales Time coverage: 2007, 2008 Type of data: Administrative data

Purpose: This review article summarizes programmatic research on sentence diversity in toddlers developing language typically and explores developmental patterns of sentence diversity in toddlers at risk for specific language impairment.Method: The first half of this review article presents a sentence-focused approach to language assessment and intervention and reviews findings from empirical studies of sentence diversity. In the second half, subject and verb diversity in three simple sentence types are explored in an archival database of toddlers with varying levels of grammatical outcomes at 36 months of age: low average, mild/moderate delay, and severe delay.Results: Descriptive findings from the archival database replicated previous developmental patterns. All toddlers with low-average language abilities produced diverse simple sentences by 30 months of age and exhibited greater sentence diversity with first-person I-subjects before third-person subjects. Third-person subject diversity emerged in a developmental sequence, increasing in one-argument copula contexts and one-argument subject–verb sentences before two-argument subject–verb–object sentences. This developmental pattern held across all three outcome groups. Third-person subjects were least diverse for children with severe grammatical delays and were absent in all sentence contexts for two children with severe delays at 36 months.Conclusions: Sentence diversity increases gradually and expands in predictable patterns. Understanding these developmental patterns may help identify and treat children who display unexpected difficulty combining different subjects and verbs in flexible ways.Supplemental Material S1. Verbs by subject type.Supplemental Material S2. Third-person subjects by sentence type.Also included: Presentation video from the Research Symposium at the 2019 Annual Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association held in Orlando, FL. Hadley, P. A. (2020). Exploring sentence diversity at the boundary of typical and impaired language abilities. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 63(10), 3236–3251. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_JSLHR-20-00031Publisher Note: This article is part of the Forum: Advances in Specific Language Impairment Research & Intervention.

This statistic shows the average length of time served by prisoners in the United States in 2014, by state. California had the longest average time served at 6.8 years in 2014.

This study re-analyzes Isaac Ehrlich's 1960 cross-section data on the relationship between aggregate levels of punishment and crime rates. It provides alternative model specifications and estimations. The study examined the deterrent effects of punishment on seven FBI index crimes: murder, rape, assault, larceny, robbery, burglary, and auto theft. Socio-economic variables include family income, percentage of families earning below half of the median income, unemployment rate for urban males in the age groups 14-24 and 35-39, labor force participation rate, educational level, percentage of young males and non-whites in the population, percentage of population in the SMSA, sex ratio, and place of occurrence. Two sanction variables are also included: 1) the probability of imprisonment, and 2) the average time served in prison when sentenced (severity of punishment). Also included are: per capita police expenditure for 1959 and 1960, and the crime rates for murder, rape, assault, larceny, robbery, burglary, and auto theft.

Adult correctional services, sentenced custody admissions to provincial and territorial programs by sex and sentence length ordered, five years of data.

Despite the fact that most states enacted rape reform legislation by the mid-1980s, empirical research on the effect of these laws was conducted in only four states and for a limited time span following the reform. The purpose of this study was to provide both increased breadth and depth of information about the effect of the rape law changes and the legal issues that surround them. Statistical data on all rape cases between 1970 and 1985 in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, were collected from court records. Monthly time-series analyses were used to assess the impact of the reforms on rape reporting, indictments, convictions, incarcerations, and sentences. The study also sought to determine if particular changes, or particular combinations of changes, affected the case processing and disposition of sexual assault cases and whether the effect of the reforms varied with the comprehensiveness of the changes. In each jurisdiction, data were collected on all forcible rape cases for which an indictment or information was filed. In addition to forcible rape, other felony sexual assaults that did not involve children were included. The names and definitions of these crimes varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. To compare the pattern of rape reports with general crime trends, reports of robbery and felony assaults during the same general time period were also obtained from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) from the Federal Bureau of Investigation when available. For the adjudicated case data (Parts 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11), variables include month and year of offense, indictment, disposition, four most serious offenses charged, total number of charges indicted, four most serious conviction charges, total number of conviction charges, type of disposition, type of sentence, and maximum jail or prison sentence. The time series data (Parts 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12) provide year and month of indictment, total indictments for rape only and for all sex offenses, total convictions and incarcerations for all rape cases in the month, for those on the original rape charge, for all sex offenses in the month, and for those on the original sex offense charge, percents for each indictment, conviction, and incarceration category, the average maximum sentence for each incarceration category, and total police reports of forcible rape in the month. Interviews were also conducted in each site with judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, and this information is presented in Part 13. These interviewees were asked to rate the importance of various types of evidence in sexual assault cases and to respond to a series of six hypothetical cases in which evidence of the victim's past sexual history was at issue. Respondents were also presented with a hypothetical case for which some factors were varied to create 12 different scenarios, and they were asked to make a set of judgments about each. Interview data also include respondent's title, sex, race, age, number of years in office, and whether the respondent was in office before and/or after the reform.

In 2022, the most common length of prison sentences in Sweden was one month. 1,500 people were sentenced to prison for this long. With 1,400, people sentenced to imprisonment for between one and two years made up the second largest group. The number of prisoners with a lifetime sentence amounted to 30. The most common type of crime committed that year was theft crimes.

Increasing criminal sanctions may reduce crime through two primary mechanisms: deterrence and incapacitation. Disentangling their effects is crucial for optimal policy setting. I use sentence enhancements due to the introduction of state add-on gun laws to isolate the deterrent effect of incarceration. Using cross-state variation in the timing of law passage dates, I find that the average add-on gun law results in a roughly 5 percent decline in gun robberies within the first 3 years. This result is robust to a number of specification tests and does not appear to be associated with large spillovers to other types of crime. (JEL K14, K42)