GovWire

About the Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme

If a sentence given in a Crown Court appears to be very low, or unduly lenient, anyone can ask the Attorney General to examine the sentence, within 28 days of sentencing.

The Attorney or Solicitor General may then ask the Court of Appeal to look at the sentence. The court may decide to keep the sentence the same, increase it, or issue guidance for future cases.

ULS scheme case outcomes data

Please note the ULS data released by the AGO are not official or national statistics, but are instead management information.

We publish unduly lenient sentence data annually. This data includes the number of sentences examined, the outcome and details of the cases.

We also publish a weekly update of case outcomes for recent sentences examined by the Attorney Generals Office under the Unduly Lenient Sentence Scheme.

Please note the published annual data only includes cases referred to the Court of Appeal whereas the weekly data include all cases referred to the AGO, including Not in Scheme and Out of Time cases.

Statistical releases published before 2011 can be found at the National Archives