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Produced by the Sentencing Academy

Suspended Sentence Orders

Peer-reviewed research on the effectiveness and impact of sentences, orders, and requirements.

Eleanor Curzon, 23es

Published: 10 Oct 2025
Last updated: Oct 2025

Summary

This bulletin summarises research on the effectiveness of Suspended Sentence Orders in England and Wales for adult offenders. Effectiveness is considered in terms of fulfilling the aims of sentencing under Section 57 of the Sentencing Act 2020.

Suspended Sentence Orders can be imposed under the terms set out in Section 264, 277 and Chapter 5 of the Sentencing Act 2020. They can only be imposed when the court determines that the custody threshold has been crossed and the term of imprisonment is at least 14 days and not more than 2 years. The SSO can be imposed unconditionally, with a single requirement or a combination of the 15 available requirements, listed at Section 287 of the Sentencing Act 2020.

Research demonstrates that SSOs are more effective in reducing rates of reoffending than short prison sentences (under 12 months). However, further research is required to understand why this is the case, and the relationship between deterrence, SSOs, and reoffending.

A court can decide to suspend an immediate sentence of imprisonment, thereby imposing a Suspended Sentence Order, if the custodial sentence is between 14 days and 2 years

If an SSO is imposed, the offender will serve their sentence of imprisonment in the community rather than in a prison. Factors that tend towards and away from suspension are provided by the Sentencing Council within the Imposition of community and custodial sentences guideline (Sentencing Council, 2025). The imposition of an SSO can be unconditional or require an offender to comply with a set of requirements, which are usually recommended by the Probation Service within a Pre-Sentence Report. Section 287 of the Sentencing Act 2020 lists the 15 requirements currently available to be attached to an SSO (see our explainer on SSO requirements):

  1. Unpaid work requirement
  2. Rehabilitation activity requirement
  3. Programme requirement
  4. Prohibited activity requirement
  5. Curfew requirement
  6. Exclusion requirement
  7. Residence requirement
  8. Foreign travel prohibition requirement
  9. Mental health treatment requirement
  10. Drug rehabilitation requirement
  11. Alcohol treatment requirement
  12. Alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirement
  13. Attendance centre requirement
  14. Electronic compliance monitoring requirement
  15. Electronic whereabouts monitoring requirement

The court must consider whether the package of requirements proposed are compatible with each other. The requirement/s should avoid conflict with an offender’s religious beliefs and interference with an offender’s time at work or in education.

If the SSO is breached by way of commission of a further offence or failure to comply with requirements, the suspended sentence of imprisonment must be ‘activated’ unless it is unjust to do so in all the circumstances. Activation will require the offender to serve part or all of the original custodial term in prison and is at the discretion of the court. There are Sentencing Council guidelines to assist the court with this exercise (Sentencing Council, 2018).

The imposition of an SSO is not intended to be a more severe form of a Community Order, nor is it intended to replace a term of immediate imprisonment. A sentence can only be suspended once the custody threshold has been crossed. However, research has suggested that this guidance has not always been followed in practice, where those who should receive a Community Order or lesser sentence are, in fact, receiving the more severe sanction of an SSO, a trend referred to as ‘net widening’ (Irwin-Rogers and Roberts, 2019).  

Deterrence lies at the heart of a suspended sentence. The threat of immediate imprisonment hangs over the offender like a ‘Sword of Damocles,’ encouraging an offender to comply with requirements and desist from further offending behaviour. The sentencing principle of parsimony, which requires courts to impose the sanction that is the least onerous, but which achieves the purpose of sentencing, is also a central tenet of SSOs (Irwin-Rogers and Roberts, 2019). This means that if the goals of sentencing can be achieved through the imposition of a suspended sentence (rather than immediate imprisonment), the offender should be placed on an SSO.

This Bulletin reviews empirical studies published in English from 2015-2025 on the use and effectiveness of SSOs in England and Wales.

SSOs are a relatively rarely imposed sentence in England and Wales

In the last fifteen years, the use of SSOs has remained relatively stable, with 4-5% of offenders receiving an SSO each year across all courts. As such, the SSO remains a relatively rarely imposed sentence. However, for adult offenders sentenced for indictable and triable either-way offences in 2024, SSOs accounted for 22% of all sentences imposed, and between 2017 and 2024, this fluctuated between 18-22% (Ministry of Justice, 2024). This indicates that SSOs are used more frequently in cases where an offender has committed a more serious offence.1

In the last decade, the number of SSOs imposed peaked in 2015 with 57,072 (Irwin-Rogers and Roberts, 2019). Most recently, 43,717 SSOs were imposed in 2023, and 48,949 were imposed in 2024 (Ministry of Justice, 2025a). In 2024, violence against the person (10,012) and theft (8,079) were the two most frequent offence categories attracting an SSO (Ministry of Justice, 2025b).

Between the end of March 2024 and the end of March 2025, the probation caseload for those on an SSO increased by 7% (Ministry of Justice, 2025b). Between January and March 2025, 9,436 offenders started SSOs with requirements, an increase of 4% from the previous quarter, and a 6% increase from the same quarter last year. During the same period, 77 % of the 8,267 SSOs were terminated successfully, e.g. ran their full course or were terminated early for good progress. (Ministry of Justice, 2025b). The equivalent figure for Community Orders was 73%, indicating that SSOs have a higher rate of successful termination, although the reasons for this are unknown.

SSOs are associated with lower reoffending rates compared to short-term custodial sentences of 12 months or less

Existing data shows that offenders who receive a custodial sentence under 12 months and who receive no supervision upon release, have been found to have higher rates of reoffending when compared with those who receive Community Orders or SSOs (Mews et al. 2015). Research by Eaton and Mews for the Ministry of Justice (2019) found similar results for offenders who received short-term custodial sentences and who were then released with supervision.2 The one-year reoffending rate and the number of reoffences per sentencing occasion3 was also higher (a statistically significant difference of 4 percentage points) for those who received a short-term custodial sentence of less than 12 months, compared to if a Community Order or a Suspended Sentence Order had been imposed (Ministry of Justice, 2019). Evidence therefore supports the conclusion that Suspended Sentence Orders are more likely to reduce the rate of reoffending than a prison sentence of less than 12 months.

SSOs with Requirements are More Effective at Preventing Reoffending

Research also shows that SSOs with requirements are more effective than SSOs without requirements. The Sentencing Council (2022), utilising the Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) proven reoffending statistics, analysed known reoffending rates and the average number of reoffences for sentences without immediate custody between April 2019 and March 2020. It found that suspended sentences with requirements were more effective at reducing rates of reoffending than suspended sentences without requirements, albeit the information used relied on descriptive statistics without controls. The lack of controls means that the conclusions that can be drawn from the data are limited. The most recently availably MoJ proven reoffending statistics, published on 31 July 2025, include proven adult reoffending data from the first three quarters of 2023. This data shows that for those who received an SSO with requirements between April and June 2023, the proportion who reoffended was 24.8%, compared to 41.1% for those with no requirements (Table C1a). Between July and September 2023, the proportion was 25.3%, compared to 42%. This data suggests that SSOs with requirements are more effective at reducing rates of reoffending than unconditional SSOs. However, the specific requirements or combination of requirements that result in this outcome are unknown.

The reason for the lower reoffending rates for those who receive SSOs remains unclear. However, the deterrent effect of the SSO could be a contributing factor. First time offenders (those with no previous offences) have been found to be 27% less likely to reoffend when an SSO is imposed on them in comparison to a Community Order (Ministry of Justice, 2018). If the offender had more than 50 previous convictions, the likelihood of reoffending was only 9% lower for those who received an SSO rather than a Community Order. Furthermore, as the age of the offender increased, the SSO was associated with greater benefit in reducing reoffending, but less benefit as the number of previous offences increased (MoJ, 2019). Regression analysis conducted by the MoJ (2018) found that there was no statistically significant effect of ethnicity or gender when comparing the reoffending rates of short-term custodial sentences with SSOs and Community Order as well as between SSOs and Community Orders.

The limitations of existing data

Much of the evidence base for the effectiveness of SSOs is obtained from MoJ data. The MoJ’s proven reoffending statistics provide known reoffending rates within a year of an offender’s release. For those who have reoffended, they also include the average number of reoffences. However, due to the timescale of that data being limited to one year, factors such as the impact that probation or prison support have, and the wider circumstances of an offender, may not be reflected in the data, nor can the causes of reoffending be ascertained. Furthermore ‘proven reoffending’ is only a subset of all reoffending behaviour, excluding reoffending that goes undetected. It does not tell us the seriousness of the offence that has been committed, or the reasons why there is less reoffending, including reasons such as entry into employment, disassociation with negative peers, or abstinence from drugs or alcohol.

Absent from the available MoJ data are breach rates, the combination of requirements that are attached to an SSO, and the combinations of requirements that lead to lower rates of reoffending. Without such data, it is hard to determine which aspects of an SSO are most effective in reducing reoffending, resulting in courts “sentencing in the dark”, a concern previously raised by Curzon and Roberts (2021). The Sentencing Council (2018) has raised similar concerns, stating that ‘there is no reliable data available on the action taken when a breach occurs’ and it is not known how many breaches of an SSO lead to a custodial sentence or the length of that sentence.

However, a small data collection exercise was conducted by the Sentencing Council (2018) in 80 magistrates’ courts in England and Wales between November 2017 and March 2018, where sentencers were asked to give details about how they dealt with breaches of community and Suspended Sentence Orders. Of the 174 data collection forms analysed for SSO breaches, 52% of offenders had their sentences activated following a breach (31% in full and 21% in part), 38% had their order modified, and 10% had a different sentence imposed. It was also found that the lower the level of compliance with the order, the more likely the sentence would be activated. Of the offenders who were deemed to have failed to comply with their order, 93% had their sentences activated. If there was non-activation, an extension of the operational period or the addition of further requirements (most often further Rehabilitation Activity Requirement days (RAR)) was the most common penalty. The limited sample size means that the data only represents a very small proportion of all SSO breaches and sentencing practice, particularly as it excludes Crown Court decisions. Some Crown Court sentencing remark transcripts were analysed, but there is no statistically significant data available, such that firm conclusions cannot be made.

Researchers have also looked at the impact of SSOs on crime rates, using a unique panel of Police Force Area (PFA) level data in England and Wales for the period of 2002-2013, obtained through a Freedom of Information request (Abramaovaite et al., 2018). The data set details how many different sentences were imposed for all crime during this period, distinguishing between custodial and non-custodial sentences in each PFA. Using sentence-type and offence-type conviction rates derived from this data, the research explores the effect of alternative sentencing methods on crime rates in PFAs. The research concludes that for robbery and property crime, community sentences (including SSOs) are an effective substitute for custody. Overall, the research suggests that alternatives to custody, including the SSO, can sometimes be more effective than incarceration at reducing crime rates, depending on the crime-type. An acknowledged limitation of this research is that ‘it is not possible to disaggregate all the mechanisms through which criminal justice might affect crime rates’ and, of course, identifying a ‘a causal connection between sentencing policies, offender behaviour and community experience of crime is a key challenge’ (Abramaovaite et al., 2018).

Existing evidence supports the effectiveness of Suspended Sentence Orders at reducing rates of reoffending when compared to short-term custodial sentences. However, the reasons for this cannot be extracted from the data, and the role that deterrence plays in reducing rates of reoffending cannot be determined from empirical data. As Mutebi and Brown (2023) note, ‘there are limitations in the evidence base in identifying related factors, direct causalities of offending and other outcomes for offenders sentenced to short-term imprisonment.’ Such data would contribute to a better understanding of the reasons for which the SSO appears to be effective in comparison to short-term custodial sentences.

Conclusion

The evidence suggests that SSOs with requirements are more effective at reducing rates of reoffending than short prison sentences. There remains a relative lack of research into the effectiveness of SSOs more generally and into the most effective combination of requirements that can be attached to an SSO.

This Bulletin is part of a series on the effectiveness of sentencing in England & Wales. Other Effectiveness Bulletins can be found here.

For further information, contact Annalena Wolcke at a.wolcke@sentencingacademy.org.uk

References

  1. Triable either-way offences and indictable offences are generally seen as more serious offences than summary-only offences. ↩︎
  2. In 2014, the Offender Rehabilitation Act was introduced, which led to offenders who received short-term custodial sentences being released with supervision. ↩︎
  3. Sentencing occasion was used as some offenders are sentenced more than once during the period. ↩︎