You asked
There is anecdotal evidence that female perpetrators of violent crime receive harsher sentencing than male perpetrators of equivalent crimes, however I cannot find any statistical evidence to back this up.
Under the freedom of information act I would like to request data comparing the sentences awarded (including duration) to perpetrators of violent crime based on the category of the crime and the gender of the perpetrator.
Crime types I would like to see the data for are:
violence against the person
homicide
sexual offences
domestic violence
(or a set of crime types covering these general areas)
For each of these crime types/groups I would like data on the sentence awarded (e.g. discharge, fine, community sentence, suspended sentence, immediate custody), and where custody is awarded, the average length of the sentence separated by gender of the perpetrator.
I would like the data split by year for three recent years, e.g. 2011, 2012 and 2013.
We said
The Office for National Statistics publish statistics taken from the Crime Survey for England and Wales and crimes recorded by the police. It does not deal with statistics relating to sentencing or offenders, and therefore does not hold the information requested. The Ministry of Justice may be able to help and can be contacted at statistics.enquiries@justice.gsi.gov.uk.