Consistency in sentencing

One of the Sentencing Council's key objectives is to promote greater consistency in sentencing. While there is no universally accepted definition of consistency in sentencing, the general concept is clear: similar offenders who commit similar offences in similar circumstances would be expected to receive similar sentencing outcomes. However, it is difficult to measure whether greater consistency has been achieved by the Council's guidelines.

The Sentencing Council's aim is for guidelines to promote consistency of approach to sentencing. This consistency of approach should then lead to consistent outcomes where all of the facts of a case and offender circumstances are the same. Focusing only on final sentences would not provide an accurate picture of whether sentencing is consistent, as it would not be possible to tell whether the offences being compared are truly comparable.

Additional information: - The following outputs will be required: • An analysis plan to guide the work; • Datasets, syntax and accompanying metadata, deliverable in SAS readable datasets; • An initial report detailing the different methods considered, including their strengths and limitations, and the final method/s chosen, with an explanation of the reasons for this (the method will then be agreed with the Sentencing Council, before going on to be applied to the guidelines); • A final report incorporating a full write-up of the methodology and the findings of all of the offences covered, explaining the extent to which consistency has been achieved by the guidelines; • A document detailing how to apply the method in future; • A presentation of findings/ a discussion meeting - at a date to be confirmed - will also be required and proposed costings should include this as one meeting. - Analysis and report writing should conform to GSS and Sentencing Council protocols. - The report from this work will be fed into wider evaluation work. This wider work will be published at the relevant time and credit given to the successful contractors for their role in the early data analysis.

Two formal meetings will be required with the contractors during the contract: • An inception meeting to finalise the analytical design; • A meeting/ presentation to consider key findings.

In addition, the successful contractor will be expected to attend the Sentencing Council's academic seminar, to be held jointly with The Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, on 1st December 2017.

The contract will be only up to 30th March 2018 without any option for further extension.

This project is commissioned by the Sentencing Council for England and Wales. We wish to commission a contract for developing a methodology for assessing consistency, and application of this methodology to select offences from three of the Council's existing guidelines, namely: • Domestic burglary (part of the Burglary Offences definitive guideline ); • Supply/ possession with intent to supply a controlled drug (part of the Drug Offences definitive guideline ), and; • Theft from a shop or stall (part of the Theft Offences definitive guideline ).

The procurement exercise will run via the eSourcing portal https://ministryof justicecommercial.bravosolution.co.uk. If your organisation is not already registered then we advise you to register using the above link.

Please submit your response using Project reference prj_1888 Consistency in sentencing ITT_1528 - Consistency in sentencing

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