A decline in the proportion of charges and persons issued with fines is also observed for 1997. Table 3.4 describes the penalty for each offence group resulting in conviction by the sex and race of the defendant. Table 3.5 provides a more detailed description of charges finalised by the Higher Courts in 1997. For each offence group, the table shows how many charges resulted in conviction and describes the most serious penalty awarded for each charge. Table VI summarises, for selected offences only, information on the length of sentences imposed for those charges resulting in conviction and imprisonment during 1997.
Sentence length is expressed as the mean number of months awarded.
In addition, the minimum, maximum and median sentences imposed, the percentage of convictions leading to imprisonment and the number of charges involved in the calculation of average sentence length are included. Such averages only crudely summarise the distribution of sentences as many offences display a wide range of sentence lengths. Similar variations were found for other offence categories. Figure 3.2 presents the distribution of sentence lengths for selected offences groups. The figure shows that sentence length varies with offence type.