Justice spokesperson, Doug Beattie MC MLA said, “Today, the Ulster Unionist Party will bring forward a motion to the floor of the Assembly, which looks at sentencing practices in Northern Ireland for criminal offences. The motion aims to debate the culture within our judiciary, sentencing criteria and guidelines, as well as how we support victims and deal with the extraordinary repeat offending rate.

“Without a doubt, people are losing, and in some cases have lost, confidence in our criminal justice system. A recent Criminal Justice Inspection Report found that since the devolution of policing and justice to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive 15 years ago, there has been limited improvement in the overall performance of the criminal justice system. It further found that there was no collectively agreed vision or strategic priorities which were shared by the Department and the key criminal justice organisations. This has led, according to the report, to criminal justice outcomes remaining relatively static despite numerous strategies and policies, with impactful change being slow.

“The department, indeed, the Minister might not agree with this report, but the reality is that this is the experience of many who find themselves captured by the criminal justice system either as a perpetrator, victim, witness, or those who provide the service. It is one of the most damning reports to have been written about our criminal justice system and it must prompt change. The leadership of the organisation, in this case, the Justice Minister, cannot turn a blind eye to its findings or hide behind the slippery statements of ‘independence of the judiciary’ or ‘it’s an operational matter’.

“In the Ulster Unionist Party motion, we ask for the judiciary to undergo continuous and compulsory personal development training. This is to ensure they are keeping up to pace with changes in justice best practices, but more importantly, societal changes.  This training must challenge the language used by some when outlining a sentence and must take us away from judges telling a serious, and dangerous, sex offender ‘to find a wife and start a family’ and then go to allow the perpetrator to continue accessing dating sites, the very sites he used to sexual assault women because he didn’t want to exclude the individual from normal life.

“Presently, the Lady Chief Justice is responsible, through the Judicial Studies Board, for the training of the judiciary who are invited to attend training sessions. The motion does not recommend changing this structure, although we believe it should be more than an invite; it should be compulsory, which can only be a good thing for the judiciary and those within the criminal justice system.

“The issue of lenient sentencing is fast becoming a major issue. Over recent months and years, we have seen pitiful sentences handed to the perpetrators of serious crimes, in particular, but not limited to, crimes of a sexual nature, including those against children. It is clear the public wants to see sentences act as a deterrent, and that means stronger and longer sentences for serious crimes. The argument that rehabilitation needs to be at the heart of our criminal justice system is a fair argument and one we support; however, given that nearly 80% of those presently in our prisons are repeat offenders, the question must be asked: Is it working?

“Presently, there is a consultation out regarding sentence credit for pleading guilty. That reduction in sentence ranges from a third off your sentence if you plead guilty at the earlier opportunity, to up to a quarter if you leave it to the day the trial starts. I find this totally unacceptable, and although I understand the reasons for such a scheme, the outworkings of it are putting the perpetrator in the driving seat. Even a sliding scale leaves it to the perpetrator to plead guilty when it suits them and only if they think things are going against them. By this stage, the victim has been put through a torturous process, in many cases, for years.

“The Ulster Unionist party believe that there should be one opportunity to plead guilty to have time taken off your sentence, that is at arraignment or before. If the opportunity is not taken, then it falls to the judge to decide if the perpetrator deserves any reduction of their sentence. That said, a late guilty plea should only allow time off the license element of any sentence and not from the custodial element.  This puts the judiciary in the driving seat and not the perpetrator, who, in this instance, is guilty of a serious crime.

“Yet with all the issues facing sentencing in Northern Ireland, there remains a belief that a sentencing council, such as the one they have in England and Wales, would give far greater transparency and consistency with clear guidelines and sentencing remarks that can be understood. For those who watched the Judges' detailed sentencing remarks of Alex Rudakubana, the murderer of 3 little girls in Southport, they would have been left with no questions as to why he got the sentence he did and the reasons why it was not a whole life sentence. In contrast, our own sentencing remarks here in Northern Ireland are complicated, impossible to understand, lack clarity or openness and are based primarily on case law using language few will comprehend.

“We don’t even have a system where the victim is provided, free of charge, a copy of the sentencing remarks in a timely manner.

“It is true the Lady Chief Justice disagrees with a sentencing council as she has said it would be ‘overly rigid and constricting’ and ‘our system of guideline judgments under the steer of the Court of Appeal has served us well.’ Of course, I absolutely respect the independent judiciary and the position of the Lady Chief Justice Dame Siobhan Keegan. But the issue is, for many, the system has not served them well, and it is time we had fundamental change within our criminal justice system.

“Challenging the system is not about challenging the independence of the judiciary, it's about adding value to a system that is losing confidence. If the criminal justice system is not willing to take advice from outside the organisation but relies purely on views from within, then the view of the trees is genuinely being obscured by the forest in front of them.”