The Facts

• The U.K.'s Sentencing Council has announced it will delay its new community and custodial sentence guidelines after Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood had pledged to draft legislation to prevent its imposition.
• Earlier this year, the Council published guidelines requiring courts to specifically consider pre-sentence reports – which provide a court with greater background of an offender and understanding of why a crime occurred – for offenders who are of an ethnic, cultural, and faith minority, female, or transgender among other categories.
• The guidelines, which were set to take effect at the start of April, were developed through consultation beginning under the previous Conservative government before continuing under Labour.
• The Council previously rejected the government's request for the new guidelines to be revised, before claiming on Monday that, despite still supporting the text, they "would not introduce a guideline when there is a draft Bill due for imminent introduction that would make it unlawful."
• The Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill is to be introduced into Parliament Tuesday blocking "differential treatment for different races and religions," 16 years after the Sentencing Council was established in 2009.
• Official figures show that offenders from ethnic minorities receive longer sentences than white offenders for indictable offenses, with Asian males receiving the longest average custodial sentence length of 30.8 months in 2022.