100 previous convictions? How you can still avoid prison – insidetime & insideinformation

A long criminal record can put you at a disadvantage if you are convicted of another crime – but it is not a guarantee that you will receive a prison sentence.

Last year, there were 3,325 cases in which courts refused to send a recently convicted man or woman to prison despite them having 50 or more previous convictions. In 252 of these cases, the person in the dock had more than 100 previous convictions but was still not sent to prison.

The figures, which cover England and Wales, were released by the Ministry of Justice in Parliament. They do not disclose what offence was involved in each case, so most were presumably minor offences. A separate table from the Ministry of Justice suggests that in only 90 of the 3,325 cases, and in just five of the 252 cases, the final conviction was a violent crime.

Although judges and justices of the peace have recently been asked to consider imposing community sentences instead of prison sentences due to the capacity crisis in prisons, the table of figures shows that suspended sentences for repeat offenders are not a new phenomenon. In each year between 2012 and 2023, there were more than 200 cases in which people were spared a prison sentence for their most recent offence despite having more than 100 previous convictions.

Additionally, last year, a person convicted of burglary was spared a prison sentence for a second burglary conviction, despite having been convicted of burglary 21 times before. Another person was spared a prison sentence for a sexual assault conviction, despite having been convicted of seven sexual assaults.

Presenting the figures in the House of Commons, Government parliamentary group leader Nicholas Dakin said such data was not routinely published, adding: “The information provided comes from a complicated retrieval from the national police computer. It should be noted that sentencing decisions in individual cases are a matter for the independent judiciary.”

The information was released in response to a written question from Conservative MP Neil O'Brien, who is campaigning against plans to build a new large prison next to HMP Gartree in his Harborough constituency in Leicestershire.