During my time as Attorney General over the past six months, and for 18 months before that as Solicitor General, I have frequently spoken of the importance of the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) Scheme. This scheme was introduced in 1989 and allows victims of crime, the police, prosecutors and members of the public to ask for certain Crown Court sentences to be reviewed if they believe such sentences to be too low.
It was announced last week that the latest annual statistics for the ULS scheme show that my Office received 552 applications which met the criteria for appeal, and of these 97 were referred to the Court of Appeal. That Court then increased the sentences of 61 of those 97 cases, many of these involving sex offenders, violent abusers and other serious criminals.
The Law Gazette, a legal publication, recently published an article on the success of the ULS scheme. I was interviewed by this periodical to highlight the importance of the scheme, not only for people to have a pathway to appeal a sentence they believe is too low, but also the role of the scheme in clarifying certain areas of the law. You can read this article here: Attorney general keen to raise awareness of sentencing powers | News | Law Gazette
Additionally, my recent article for The Times newspaper on the importance of the ULS scheme was published on Thursday, 2nd September. In the article, I use examples of ULS cases I have personally taken to court. You can click here to read that article.