England and Wales: Probation officers ordered not to recommend suspended sentences

In a leaked letter addressed to judges, magistrates and probation officers, Lord Justice Treacy, chairman of the Sentencing Council, said suspended sentences are being wrongly used “as a more severe form of community order”.

He pointed out that the number of community orders handed down had rapidly declined from 203,000 in 2005 to fewer than 108,000 in 2015, while the number of suspended sentences had increased over the same period, from 4,000 in 2005 to more than 52,000 in 2015.

As a result, Lord Justice Treacy has agreed with the director of the National Probation Service (NPS) that probation officers will “refrain from recommending SSOs in pre-sentence reports”.

However, he insisted: “This in no way impacts upon the judicial discretion to suspend custodial sentences: it merely seeks to reinforce good sentencing practice.”