Prison Population Projections 2014 – 2020 
 that there is no prioritisation of any age or sex group within the 
Magistrates’ and Crown Court;   
 the number of working days in each month is the primary driver of 
seasonality within the Magistrates’ and Crown Court; 
 no change in offence type occurs as cases move through the system; 
 defendants that are tried at the Magistrates’ Court proceed to 
sentencing without delay; 
 delays within the Magistrates’ Court are not significant for the monthly 
timescales used in the modelling; and 
 a Magistrates’ Court backlog will not develop during the forecast 
period. 
The Sentencing Module takes the number of defendants disposed of in the 
Magistrates’ Workload Model and the Crown Court Workload Model and 
applies sentencing splits based on analysis of court proceedings data from 
January 2004 to June 2014.  This results in a set of projections as broken 
down in Table B1.  These are aggregated providing forecasts for each 
offence, gender, age and disposal category, which are used as the custodial 
conviction projections. 
Table B1: Courts and Sentencing Module Splits Dimensions 
Offence Type Gende r Age Band Court Route Disposal
Burglary Male Age 10-17 MC Discharge
Criminal Damage Female Age 18-20 MCCC Fine
Fraud and Forgery Age 21+ CC Community Sentence
Indictable Motoring Suspended Sentence
Other Custodial <6 months
Robbery Custodial 6 months - <1year
Sexual Offences Custodial 1year - 4 year
Summary Motoring Custodial 4 year+
Summary Non-Motoring Indeterminate 
Theft and handling Otherwise Dealt With
Violence Against the Person  
Key to the court route splits: MC: those tried and sentenced in the Magistrates Court; MCCC: those who are 
tried in the Magistrates Court and Sentenced in the Crown Court; CC: combines those defendants who are 
committed for trial in the Crown Court and sent for trial in the Crown Court into a single category. 
If required, the Courts and Sentencing Module allows trends in offender 
demographics and courts and sentencing processes to be incorporated into 
custodial convictions projections. This procedure was implemented to create 
the custodial convictions projections used in the three published scenarios. 
 
24