The Sentencing Council has conducted analysis of sentencing data to consider the association between an offender’s sex and ethnicity and the sentence imposed at the Crown Court for supply, possession with intent to supply and conspiracy to supply a controlled drug of classes A and B. In 2018, these offences accounted for around 12 per cent of all adult offenders sentenced at the Crown Court.

The findings suggest that after controlling for many (but not all) of the main factors that sentencers are required to take into account when sentencing these three specific offences, an offender’s sex, and to a lesser extent, their ethnicity, were associated with different sentencing outcomes.