Sentencing

If you’ve been a victim or witness of a crime and someone is taken to court and found guilty, you’ll probably want to know the outcome of the trial, or sentencing.

You may have reported the crime and gone through the difficult process of giving evidence in court, so it’s only normal to want to see how the offender is held to account for what they have done.

How sentencing works

Whether or not you think the sentence the court gives is right, it can be helpful to understand how the courts decide what kind of sentence fits the crime. To help you better understand this process, we’ve worked with the Sentencing Council – the body responsible for setting the guidelines that judges and magistrates have to follow – to produce a short video that explains the system.

You can read more about sentencing on the Sentencing Council’s website or watch the videos below.