Sentencing

If you’ve been a victim or witness of a crime and someone is taken to court and found guilty, you’ll probably want to know the outcome of the trial, or sentencing.

You may have reported the crime and gone through the difficult process of giving evidence in court, so it’s only normal to want to see how the offender is held to account for what they have done.

How sentencing works

Whether or not you think the sentence the court gives is right, it can be helpful to understand how the courts decide what kind of sentence fits the crime. To help you better understand this process, we’ve worked with the Sentencing Council – the body responsible for setting the guidelines that judges and magistrates have to follow – to produce a short video that explains the system.

You can read more about sentencing on the Sentencing Council’s website or watch the videos below.

The Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme

The Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme allows anyone to ask for Crown Court sentences to be reviewed by the Attorney General’s Office if they believe the sentence is too lenient. You don’t have to be connected to the case to do this.

The request must be sent to the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) for them to review and decide whether to send it to the Court of Appeal to make a decision about the sentence.

A request must be made as soon as possible, the latest the AGO can send the case to the Court of Appeal is 5pm on the last working day within 28 calendar days of the sentencing.

You can find out more information about the scheme and the specific types of cases which can be reviewed on the Gov.UK website.