Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I inform Committee members that Karen Garland, head of policy, will give evidence on behalf of the Marie Collins Foundation. Karen, you are very welcome. Thank you for your evidence. It is really appreciated. Do you have an opening statement to make?

Ms Karen Garland (Marie Collins Foundation): I do, yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Without further ado, I invite you to make your statement, please.

Ms Garland: Chair, Deputy Chair and Committee members, thank you for inviting the Marie Collins Foundation to give evidence on the Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill. The Marie Collins Foundation is a victim-centred, recovery-focused charity that works across the UK with children and young people who have experienced technology-assisted child sexual abuse (TACSA). It includes offences such as online grooming, sexual coercion and the creation, possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), which is alternatively known as indecent images of children.

The Parts of the Bill that fall within our remit and on which my contribution will focus are Part 1, specifically the provisions in clause 1, "Purposes and principles of sentencing: adults"; Part 2, "Suspended sentences"; Part 4, "Unduly lenient sentences"; and Part 6, specifically the provisions in clause 36, "Aggravation by reason of vulnerability".

Our central message is simple: the scale, severity and changing nature of technology-assisted child sexual abuse means that a stronger sentencing response is required than that which currently exists. The evidence demonstrates that such offences are not only persistent but escalating in nature. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) recorded more than 311,000 confirmed reports about CSAM in 2025. That equates to one report every 70 seconds. We must not think about those figures in the abstract. Behind every report is a child, or multiple children, who has been sexually abused and exploited and whose abuse has been recorded and distributed online. Recent evidence also shows an extraordinary increase in AI-generated CSAM. Again, the Internet Watch Foundation reported encountering 260 times more AI-generated CSAM in 2025 than in the previous year. Research further suggests that AI-generated CSAM can act as a gateway, encouraging offenders to seek out real child sexual abuse material, as opposed to synthetic material, and can contribute to the normalisation of the sexual abuse of children. It is a severe and growing threat to children, and it requires a clear and credible response from lawmakers.

We welcome the Bill's proposal to place the purposes of sentencing on a statutory footing. In particular, we support the inclusion of "punishment" and "deterrence" among the purposes. We are highly supportive of the addition of the term "victims of crime" to the purpose of sentencing provision that relates to the "protection of the public", but that must not be a tokenistic add-on. Rather, it must translate into meaningful protection of victims.

We are, however, concerned that current sentencing policy and aspects of the Bill do not adequately deliver those objectives in practice for CSAM offences specifically.

Data from England and Wales paints a troubling but instructive picture. CSAM offences account for a significant proportion of recorded child sexual abuse offending and prosecutions, yet the vast majority of offenders convicted of such crimes do not receive immediate custody. In fact, around 81% of convictions for CSAM offences resulted in no prison time through suspended sentences or other non-custodial disposals. At the same time, those offences continue to grow in prevalence. From the victim's perspective, that raises fundamental questions. Are current sentencing approaches truly reflecting the seriousness of the harm involved? Is the punishment suitable? Is deterrence being achieved? Are victims being protected?

The Marie Collins Foundation believes that there has been a drift towards an over-reliance on rehabilitation and non-custodial outcomes, particularly for those types of sexual offences against children. Let me be clear: we support rehabilitation. We recognise that reducing reoffending requires effective treatment programmes, specialist interventions and long-term risk management. Rehabilitation is an important purpose of sentencing, but it should not eclipse punishment, deterrence, public protection and recognition of the harm suffered by victims. The creation, possession and distribution of CSAM is often viewed as being somehow distinct from contact forms of child sexual abuse. We strongly challenge that distinction. Every image depicts the abuse of a child. Every download, every upload and every act of sharing perpetuates that abuse. The presence of a screen, a device or a webcam does not reduce the harm experienced by the child victim.

We are therefore concerned that sentencing practice can sometimes send mixed messages. On the one hand, the courts acknowledge that offences involving the sexual abuse of children warrant deterrence and an immediate custodial punishment, but, on the other hand, significant scope remains for suspended sentences and community-based outcomes to be deployed. That inconsistency risks undermining public confidence. More importantly, however, it risks diminishing the experiences of victims. The Committee is likely aware of the distinction between general deterrence and specific deterrence. Both are relevant here. General deterrence communicates society's condemnation of those offences, while specific deterrence focuses on the individual offender and seeks to prevent future offending. For offences as serious, harmful and prevalent as CSAM offences, both forms of deterrence should have a meaningful role to play. Even where deterrence may not be wholly successful against a determined or habitual offender, custodial sentences achieve other important aims. They provide punishment, recognise the gravity of the offence, protect the public during the period of incarceration and demonstrate that the justice system takes harm to children seriously.

We are also concerned by the increasing use of suspended custodial sentences. Although they have a place within the justice system, we question whether they are appropriate as a default response to offences involving CSAM. A sentence that is not immediately activated can leave victims asking whether the harm that they suffered has been sufficiently recognised. It can also create a perception that custody is reserved not for the offence before the court but for a subsequent offence. In our view, the current balance is no longer right.

The Marie Collins Foundation is not calling for a purely punitive approach. Rather, we are calling for a rebalancing of sentencing policy. We want to see greater use made of immediate custodial sentences for CSAM offences, alongside properly funded rehabilitation, specialist treatment programmes and robust supervision. Custody and rehabilitation are not competing concepts. They can and should work together. The unduly lenient sentence scheme must be extended to include sentences imposed by the Magistrates' Court. That is particularly important in CSAM cases, which are routinely sentenced at the Magistrates' Court level and may result in suspended sentences, despite the serious and enduring harm caused by such offending. Under the current framework, victims have no right to seek a review of a sentence that they believe to be unduly lenient, simply because the case was dealt with in the Magistrates' Court rather than in the Crown Court. That represents a significant structural gap in victim protections, denying access to a potential remedy that would be available in comparable cases sentenced elsewhere. Expanding the scheme would ensure greater consistency, strengthen victims' rights and enhance public confidence in the fairness and accountability of sentencing.

Although we recognise the intent and effort to reflect vulnerability at sentencing by creating a statutory aggravator, we do not see how clause 36 as drafted would operate effectively for child victims of sexual offences. Where vulnerability is noted as an element of the offence, that would exclude it from the aggravator clause, thus rendering it redundant for sexual offences against children.

Finally, a recent National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children statistics briefing revealed that, in 2024-25, over one third of police-recorded sexual offences are committed against children but that, in Northern Ireland, the figure is higher than that, at 53%. Given that, there is an urgent need to provide a stronger sentencing framework for victims of TACSA. We also draw the Committee's attention to international standards, including the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child draft general comment No 27, which emphasises that access to justice includes acknowledgement of harm and appropriate sanctions for violations of children's rights. Victims of technology-assisted child sexual abuse deserve nothing less.

Chair and members, our position is that sentencing policy must better reflect the scale of such offences, the harm suffered by victims and society's responsibility to protect children. The Bill provides a brilliant opportunity to achieve that, and we urge the Committee to consider stronger and more targeted sentencing provisions, including tabling appropriate amendments for CSAM and other forms of TACSA. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you very much, Karen, for your presentation. I remind members to be concise, effective and efficient in asking their questions. Karen, please also be concise when answering.

Ms Sheerin: Thanks, Karen, for coming to the Committee and for your presentation and written briefing. I heard you say very clearly that it is not that you are opposed to rehabilitation but that you want to see stronger sentencing in order to reflect the seriousness of such crimes. In recent weeks, we have had presentations from organisations. Nexus in particular gave us a very strong testimony about non-contact sexual assault and the impact that that has. In your presentation, you gave examples of disparities in sentencing. Your written briefing gives the example of the sentence given to someone convicted of an offence involving pictures compared with the sentence given to someone who had committed tax evasion.

Ms Garland: Yes, fraud.

Ms Sheerin: Yes, financial fraud. That struck me as being really out of kilter. I know that that example is from Britain, not from here.

In my constituency, I have encountered a number of issues involving children-on-children sharing of images, with there being the very real possibility that most of those involved did not understand the repercussions or the seriousness of what they were doing. We have taken evidence in the past from the Children's Law Centre (CLC) and others involved in children's rights, and they say that, where someone who has committed a sexual crime at a young age receives the intervention of specific rehabilitation and counselling, the risk of their reoffending drops way down. I think that the figure quoted to me was 7%. Is there a role for us to insert in the Bill that, as well as a custodial sentence, there is a requirement for actual intervention to take place through the provision of psychological help or some form of therapy in order to address what caused the offending in the first place?

Ms Garland: I need to separate out a little bit what you are asking. In my submission, I very clearly mean adult offenders against children.

That is what I am referring to when I am talking about the use of immediate custodial sentences. There is really good evidence to show that while "harmful sexual behaviour" is the right terminology for that type of offending between children, or from one child to another child, when that occurs and it is located early, understood, intervened on and dealt with well, with therapeutic processes and various other things employed, there is a really good chance that children will desist from those behaviours in future.

That is different, I think, in this sense. I am happy to provide the reference for this, but the problem is that Ofcom and Protect Children put a report out recently that indicated that so many children now have seen pornography at a younger age, which is driving a pathway from legal pornography, albeit that it is not helpful for them, towards more extreme forms. That, in itself, can drive on towards CSAM offending into adulthood. There are lots of different complexities to this but in general, as I said, we believe that rehabilitation has its place. In our own analysis, however, we seem to have found that there has been an almost unduly proportionate drive towards rehabilitation, over and above punishment in the first instance. They all have to be in the mix — you cannot put all your eggs in one basket — but as things stand, the basket is a bit empty of punishment and deterrence elements.

Ms Sheerin: OK, thank you.

Ms Egan: Thank you so much for coming in today, Karen. This work is so important; I do not think anyone would disagree that protecting children from sexual predators should be an absolute priority. Please correct me if I picked it up wrong, but one of the figures in your presentation shocked me. It indicates that over 50% of sexual abuse in Northern Ireland involves children, but it is much lower, at around 24%, in the rest of the UK. Is that the figure that you said? I apologise if I picked that up wrong.

Ms Garland: Yes. It is 53% in Northern Ireland and about a third in the rest of the UK.

Ms Egan: That is terrifying.

Ms Garland: Yes.

Ms Egan: Does your organisation look into why that is? Is part of that because our sentences are not acting properly as a deterrent and punishment?

Ms Garland: Overall, we believe that that is the case. There is a general misunderstanding, which I referred to in my opening remarks. There is an understanding that contact sexual offending — which is a terrible term in and of itself. For want of explanation, when you are talking about somebody being in a room, sexually offending against a child, most people can understand that that is awful. There is a reason that those punishments are usually on the heavier end. However, we seem to have misunderstood what is happening when CSAM happens, or when sexual grooming happens to children. There is an offender present, albeit at a slight distance. In some cases, however, it is just as intimate, because they are in bedrooms with children, albeit on a screen. They are directing the child there and then.

Michael Salter is a well-known Australian academic in this space whose work is very reputable. In one of his own recent pieces of research, he said that, as a society, we have functionally permitted CSAM. He is talking about that globally. I remember putting red pen all over that paper, because it felt like the nail on the head for me. We, somehow, are permitting a form of offending against children to go on because we have decided, for whatever reason, not to take a stronger sentencing approach to it. That worries me deeply and keeps me up at night. I wonder where the tipping point will be for children. How many children will it take to put someone in prison? How many images or videos? How many category A or B? We seem to have reached a bit of an impasse around that, and that is deeply troubling.

To be specific, Connie, this is a UK-wide problem. I do not know why those figures are higher in Northern Ireland, but it is also a global issue.

Ms Egan: That is something that I wrote down, because it really concerns me. We can, and absolutely should, deal with sentencing in this Bill and in the Assembly. We are laying out the principle in law that sentencing is a punishment and a deterrent, which is really important when dealing with perpetrators of child sexual abuse. The case studies that you have provided show that people have received community service or suspended sentences for these absolutely hideous crimes. The regulation of the internet is not devolved; it is a global issue. Is there anything that you think that we, as an Assembly, could be doing, even outside the scope of the Bill, that we are not doing around regulation of this? Can we use our position to advocate for this? You are right: the rise of AI and extreme pornography is unregulated, which can lead to people's seeking out child sexual abuse images. It is far too prolific in this society.

Ms Garland: I agree. We do a lot of work around the Online Safety Act 2023 already, including a lot of engagement with Ofcom. The Online Safety Act is not perfect, but it is what we have, and I think that it can be improved in different ways. We also need to look at not only the regulation but the criminal justice aspect of this. Even having a strong regulatory regime will not entirely eliminate the presence of someone who wants to sexually offend against children. There are people who will always find a route to that. It is so important that our criminal justice system deals with those people in a very strong way by saying, "This is intolerable. We will have a zero-tolerance approach to this form of offending against children". Maybe this is a moment for Northern Ireland, after the tragic case of Alexander McCartney and the notoriety around that for this region, to lead on the issue by saying, "We're going to do something better and more. We're going to tackle CSAM sentencing in a much more robust way than anywhere else". That could make a really profound difference for children.

Ms Egan: Thank you so much for the work that you do.

Mr Kingston: Thank you, Karen. Pardon me if I have missed it, but is there a gap in the Bill when it comes to Helen's law? Am I right in thinking that Helen's law forces the Parole Board in England and Wales to consider a prisoner's refusal to reveal the identity of a child in an indecent image when deciding whether to release them? Is that correct?

Ms Garland: I cannot comment on that, Brian. I am sorry. I do not know enough about that, so I cannot say whether there is a gap. However, if it is helpful, I can take that away and look at it for you.

Mr Kingston: It is something that I looked up on the internet. It is in our notes:

I do not think that is in our current wording. I know that not everything has to be the same, but, if England and Wales have Helen's law, there might be a gap that is not covered in our Bill.

Ms Garland: If there is a gap that you have identified, that is important. I do not know enough about Helen's law personally; I am sorry about that. Because of the volume of images of CSAM, there is a way in which, unfortunately, although the judiciary recognises that there are victims, it also treats it as though it were a victimless crime at the point of trial and sentencing. If an offender has thousands of images and videos, it is very tricky for police to identify every single one of those victims individually, so a lot of those images will be put on the child abuse image database and can be cross-checked at a future point. However, where you have an offender who is not being cooperative, that surely needs to be taken into account for parole, which I think is what you said.

Mr Kingston: Yes. To be clear, it is the "taking or making" of an indecent image, as well as the viewing of it, if there is information about the victim that they are not disclosing. I do not see that in the Bill, so it is something that we can look into.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): You are talking specifically about clause 31, Brian. Is that right?

Mr Kingston: The information we have is that it seems to be part of Helen's law in England, along with the failure to disclose the location of the remains. The other point that I want to make is about the whole international aspect. Not so long ago, there was news coverage about children in the Far East being abused in rooms in a village, and it was livestreamed to paedophiles in the West. We must make sure that the legislative tools are strong enough to prevent that and convict those who participate in it.

Ms Garland: Yes, that is very valid, because livestreaming of abuse is a significant issue. The most recent report that I read said that the UK is the third-highest consumer of livestreamed child sexual abuse in the world. It is massive, and we need to do something more than we currently do.

Mr Kingston: Can you come back to us if you have any proposals on the wording?

Ms Garland: Sure.

Mr Kingston: Our role is to get the wording of the Bill right, and not just to talk about issues. We need to get the text right.

Ms Garland: I am very happy to do that.

Mr Kingston: Thank you.

Mr Beattie: Karen, thank you for your presentation. Much of what you said resonated with me, because sentencing is weak for this type of crime. Going back to the unduly lenient sentencing, I agree that we have a problem. CSAM and TACSA can be viewed as hybrid offences; in other words, they can be tried in both the Magistrates' Court and the Crown Court, summarily or on indictment, yet you can only challenge the Crown Court for unduly lenient sentencing. Would you support hybrid offences such as this that are heard in the Magistrates' Court also being open to challenge as unduly lenient?

Ms Garland: I absolutely support that. In fact, when I came into my post with the Marie Collins Foundation two years ago, I discovered that gap for myself very early on when I was doing work around sentencing. I was honestly flabbergasted, and I did not know much about the scheme at that point. I know too much about it now, but I could not believe that we had a system that effectively penalised victims depending on where the case was heard. That feels wrong. A lot of hybrid offences go to the Magistrates' Court, and, although we get some going to the Crown Court — of course we do — you need to keep parity in victims' rights. Applying to the unduly lenient sentencing scheme is no guarantee that the sentence will be uplifted, but the right to do so is an important right. We believe that that right should exist at the Magistrates' Court level.

Mr Beattie: I agree with you; you are absolutely right. The vast majority of the CSAM cases are heard in the Magistrates' Court and may find themselves in the Crown Court. I have examples of pretty lenient sentences that have been handed down in the Magistrates' Court. However, in those cases, there is nothing that you can do to challenge it. We need to sort out sentencing in Northern Ireland. I am really supportive of what you are saying, Karen. I just thought that I would say that. I have no other questions for you, but this is something I have been pushing for a while now. Thank you.

Mr McGlone: Thank you for your presentation and submission. I will pick up on some of the stuff that Emma referred to. I appreciate that some of this stuff may not be devolved. I have seen instances of bullying in schools where children have assumed identities using Instagram and Snapchat — that type of thing — and been involved in very intensive bullying campaigns against other children in the school. Some of that abuse has been really brutal, and they knew what they were doing. It was not a case of innocent, underage children who did not know what they were doing; they knew exactly what they were doing. I have heard about the purported ban on some elements of social media use by children. I have heard that it has already been subverted and that children — we will call them "children" because they are under 16 — are already finding ways of doing that. They are going to adults and getting them to log in and stuff. They are already at it. There are also assumed identities. I am maybe asking you the impossible here, but, as a professional who has engaged with this and seen the really bad sides of it, do you see any other ways that it could be tightened up? Of course, there is the sentencing bit, which we are concerned with, but when it comes to the technical bit, it seems that some classrooms contain budding AI geniuses, except they are doing it the wrong way.

Ms Garland: Yes, it is a very tricky area. The ban is not yet fully operational here, but it is coming. We worked with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology at Westminster on that, and that work has now been taken over by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Those proposals are still coming through, and, by next year, we will probably have a more complete ban. You are right: children will find ways round things. Look at what happened in Australia. It brought in the first true ban, if you like, so it is all eyes on Australia at the minute. Its eSafety Commissioner has said that the picture is not wonderful in the various periodic reports that have been done since last December. In instances where, as you said, children find workarounds, we should not blame them for doing so. They are curious and want to be online. We all like access to the internet. The internet itself is not the problem; it is about what we do with it. There are bad actors as well. On top of that, internet companies were supposed to impose highly effective age assurance to prevent children from having access to their platforms, but actually they were prompting children about their age and saying, "Are you sure that you are that age? Would you like to reconsider?". Maybe they had had an account and were supposed to have been kicked off when the ban was instituted, but the companies themselves were trying to retain child users. That is not the case for every company, but there was evidence of that happening. I am sure that we can expect similar instances here. Regulation is important, but we need all pieces of the puzzle.

Mr McGlone: That is the thing: regulation is important, but artificial intelligence is flying past all of us. There is always some smart kid in the classroom who says, "Have you seen the latest app and what you can do here?", or whatever it might be. Your organisation, through whichever Department it is over in GB — are you feeling assured that they are on top of it?

Ms Garland: Well, I would like to see a lot more being done. Just this week, I was thinking about trying to do some kind of scoping research on what measures are coming out that we know are truly concentrated around TACSA and CSAM, as opposed to — goodness, this needs well attended to as well — violence against women and girls more generally or whatever the topic is. I know that misogyny came up a few weeks ago in this room.

All those things are important, but are we doing enough targeted work, and are we doing it quickly enough to respond to the threat? The technologies are evolving really quickly and it is hard to keep up with that, so trying to future-proof that is tricky. Also, we cannot just think about evolving technologies; we have to think about evolving offenders. Even when we come up with new ways to prevent it, offenders are sophisticated and will evolve their techniques to try to gain access to children online. It is very hard to stay fully ahead of that, but there are things that we can do. The UK Government recently committed to insisting that companies remove children's ability to access nude images online and to take share. That is all positive. Those are good things that are being brought in at device level. Companies will now be forced to do that. We are plugging gaps, but gaps remain.

Mr McGlone: OK. Thank you for that, Karen.

Ms Ferguson: How are you doing, Karen? Thank you for your presentation. I want to move on from what Doug was saying about the courts. Have you gathered any comparison data between the sentencing in the Magistrates' Court and the Crown Court? You mentioned that you think that rehabilitation versus punishment has gone overboard and that unduly lenient sentences are being offered in one court. Is there any data or information available on that?

Ms Garland: The tricky thing about data is that there is data from various agencies, but it is hard to totally overlay it to make a true comparison. I have done various FOIs, and the Department of Justice very helpfully gave me some data, but it is very hard to get a complete picture. When it comes to the notion that short custodial sentences are ineffective or drive future offending, the research is not as well explicated as it needs to be for the reliance that is put on it. You will find example research that shows that a short custodial sentence will drive somebody to offend in the future. The problem is that some of the research includes self-reported studies, where an offender in one instance will say that they did not offend after they got a community order and their case will be compared with that of someone who they know definitely did offend. The nature of this type of offending is hidden. It is concealed. That is part of the problem. In our world, we talk about the unholy trinity of access, affordability and anonymity that the internet provides. In that way, it allows offenders to conceal what they are doing, plus there is end-to-end encryption on top of that.

Because of all those things, it is very hard to get a clear picture of what is happening post-sentence. However, we can see that there is an emphasis on suspended and community sentences. When I get the prevalence data or prevalence estimates and see that volume increasing every year, I have to go back and think about how the sentences are actually working. If we are using so many suspended sentences and are only using community orders, why is it not driving down offending? It does not appear to be. It is a bit chequered. Other research suggests that, when offenders in studies self-report on their offences, they tend to compress their offending, but if you hook them up to a polygraph, it just lights up, which shows that their level of offending is much higher than what they have disclosed voluntarily. It is a very tricky area.

Worryingly, the volume seems to be increasing year on year, and the practice up to now has been rehabilitation as a first point of order, community orders and suspended sentences. Surely we need to scrutinise that at some point and say, "Is this really working for children? Is this really punishing offenders and deterring them from future offences?". Is society, as a whole, condemning it? Is it known that we are hard on TACSA and CSAM and that we simply will not tolerate it?

Ms Ferguson: Given the seriousness of it, the scale of it and how it is exponentially growing, rather than reducing, do you think that the vulnerability aggravator is sufficient with regard to TACSA and CSAM?

Ms Garland: That is a really interesting area. I have a legal background. I practised law, and I like looking at legislation. This was a bit tricky for me, and I checked with one of my colleagues, who is also a former lawyer, and we discussed it back and forth. As I said when in my opening remarks, we appreciate the intent behind the vulnerability aggravator, but we are not sure that it would have any real impact for TACSA or CSAM. It is obviously to prevent double counting regarding the vulnerability element for sentencing purposes. That was mentioned by the Bar of NI when it was here.

That is true. It is right. They are trying to prevent double counting by saying that you cannot apply the aggravator where vulnerability is an element of the offence.

Look at section 3(1) of the Protection of Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1978. When you are talking about those kinds of indecent images, you are talking about indecent images of children. Children are already captured in the offence, right? It refers to children. Therefore, according to my reading, that aggravator, as it is written, would not apply. However, there is a problem with that because sentences for most of those offences tend to be quite low. There could be an argument to include it in order to help to uplift the sentences. I am not sure whether you can do that with the Bill as it is drafted, but maybe there is a way to do it if you feel that it is appropriate. I think that you could argue along those lines.

Interestingly, the Crime and Policing Act 2026 amended the sentencing code for England and Wales to add a grooming aggravator. That was the nearest comparison that I could get for you today. A grooming aggravator now exists for child sex offences. That also includes some of the CSAM offences. In essence, that demonstrates that you can add another aggravator, even if it were already —. Grooming is a part of those offences anyway, but the Westminster Government felt that grooming was so pernicious that there was a need to slap on an extra aggravator. I suppose that you could then say that you want that vulnerability aggravator there, even when it might apply in other cases where children are harmed or something has happened to a child, because, even for those types of offences, there may actually be a need to do it to uplift the sentences.

Ms Ferguson: Are you aware of any jurisdictions that have looked at a specific statutory aggravator —

Ms Garland: For vulnerability?

Ms Ferguson: — for technology-assisted child sexual abuse?

Ms Garland: No, not off the top of my head. Sorry, no. I suppose that the grooming one was the closest that I could see where it was an element of the offence, as well as having the additional aggravator then being added for sentencing purposes. That is an interesting comparison.

Ms Ferguson: My final question relates to the serious impact that it has on children, which stays with them for evermore.

Ms Garland: Yes.

Ms Ferguson: Given your legal background, what are your thoughts about the training that is available and the current level of awareness of that impact among the judiciary when it comes to sentencing?

Ms Garland: In the judiciary specifically?

Ms Ferguson: Yes.

Ms Garland: Well — OK. I do not want to criticise my former profession too heavily, but I would say that —. It is a dangerous place to be when you do not know what you do not know. If experts in that area, or any particular area, come to you asking, "Would you like training?", and that is not accepted or explored fully, that is a bit of a worry. There is a way in which members of the judiciary think that they understand sentencing and think that they understand TACSA, but I do not think that they understand it to the level that they need to. I do not want to be unfair, but I think that it sometimes comes across from the judiciary or members of the legal profession, when you are speaking to them, that, "Oh, the general public does not understand sentencing.". There is a bit of elitism around that, and a little bit of — I do not know. I feel that it is an elite sort of attitude, as though, actually, members of the public would not have their finger on the pulse of that as well, just like them. When the Bill is talking about trying to bring transparency and fairness and to improve the purposes of sentencing so that everyone can have confidence in the system, we definitely need a judiciary who are willing and open to be trained by experts.

We have offered that, and, as an organisation, we provide training for professionals. We regularly train the police, and we train social workers. We also talk to many educators because of the nature of our work and our response to victims. It is critical, but we are not there yet when it comes to training on impacts, because, if there were a true understanding of impacts, sentencing would be different.

Ms Ferguson: Thank you for that. To be honest, I agree. This is not to take anything away from the judiciary, but the experts in the field are those who have lived through it and those who have supported the individuals who go through it. We really felt that in the previous session, which reinforced the fact that nobody knows everything, and life is about continuously training in the field. Given the technology that is involved, things move so fast. I appreciate that. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you. I will stay on Ciara's point about clause 36, "Aggravation by reason of vulnerability". When I first read the provision, it struck me as being ideal for application in cases of sexual offences against children, including offences relating to CSAM and technology-assisted child sexual abuse, and it seems to sit where it should. However, there is a double-counting provision at clause 36(6):

I struggle with that because, in the Bill, "vulnerable person" means:

Ms Garland: Yes. Right.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): If we are saying that, in the case of sexual offences, aggravation by reason of vulnerability cannot be used because that is the essence of the crime, we rule out all those young people who have been sexually abused. That does not sit right with me.

Ms Garland: I agree that it is incongruous. To provide that "vulnerability" applies to anyone under the age of 18 is in step with international standards and our understanding of when childhood ends and adulthood begins, so, to pull that back and remove its effect does not make sense. I assume that — this is conjecture — the Bill's drafters thought that many of the child sexual abuse offences, including CSAM and TACSA, had a higher starting range anyway. That might be true on paper, but, when you look at sentencing practice for CSAM and TACSA, you see that that does not come through, so there is an argument for redrafting to bring those offences within scope.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): That brings me to my next question. In your written evidence, you provided a chart showing disposals in the five years from 2020 to 2024. The totals are there, and they are stark: you can see how many community sentences were given for offences involving indecent images. In 2020, there were 46 disposals in total, of which 25 were community sentences and 17 were imprisonments. In 2021, the total was 103, of which 25 were imprisonments and 65 were community sentences. In the next year, the total was similar, with 62 community sentences and 27 imprisonments. In 2023, the total was down slightly, but there were 46 community sentences and 31 imprisonments. In 2024, the total was down again, and there were 44 community sentences and 25 imprisonments. For the imprisonments, do you know what range of sentences was given? Maybe it is in the evidence, but I have not found it.

Ms Garland: I do not. It comes back to the question about data — I cannot remember who asked it. The publicly available data is not granular; it is hard to get that sort of data. That is also true in England and Wales. Data is spewed out regularly, and that is helpful, but it is not that helpful if you cannot get into the specifics of it. You will often see rape and sexual offences lumped together, but that does not tell us anything specifically about children, and this is similar. I do not know what the ranges are.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Those indecent-image-type offences could cover adults too. Is that right?

Ms Garland: No, because my request was about those that were specific to children.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): OK. I am interested in the range of sentences because Part 2 of the Bill is about suspended sentences. If you read all of Part 2, you can glean that suspended sentence orders will be apportioned to sentences that are less than two years and sentences for serious offences that are between five and seven years.

Ms Garland: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): That is when a court can give a suspended sentence. I suspect that, for a lot of the sentences in your chart, the range is between five and seven years, or even less than two years, in some cases.

Ms Garland: Less than two years. I sent through to you — you should have received it — a table of sentences that was based on publicly available information. There was a broad range of sentences, but you can see how often sentences were low or were suspended sentences. They were often community sentences or had a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) attached. Such sentences are so frequent that I think that that part of the Bill could capture a huge number of TACSA and CSAM offences. As Doug mentioned, we know that such offences go to the Magistrates' Court, which has to impose a lower sentence. It is about whether that is right or wrong.

More broadly, I really want to communicate the implications of that clause, which we can parse into serious and not serious levels. That must offend victims, because how can you fully parse it in that way? You are saying, in a way, that an offence that gets a sentence of fewer than two years should be construed as being less serious, but we know that those images are perpetuated online. Every reshare is a revictimisation for that victim. I do not think that it can be done along those lines, but that is how the Bill is drafted, and that is what it implies.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): That clause says that a "serious offence" is:

Anything less than that will be viewed as not so serious, if you like. To me, that is an issue with the suspended sentence orders. Can we, or should we, get into the area of defining what type of sentence should be used or when suspended sentence orders should be used? Do you think that that is appropriate for all sexual offences, including the offences that you are talking about?

Ms Garland: As an organisation, we have moved to a place where we believe that they are not appropriate, because they are not commensurate with the harm. We did a lot of work on Westminster's Sentencing Act 2026. We drafted amendments to the Bill, as it was then, on that specific issue, asking for a carve out for CSAM offences so that suspended sentences would be prohibited for CSAM, unless there was a good reason for them. Unfortunately, those amendments did not pass. No non-Government amendments were made. That was our argument at that time, however, and it should still be considered in this Bill, particularly with cases that have happened here. I think of Max Hollingsbee and Alexander McCartney. We have faced a lot of those terrible circumstances here. Is this an opportunity for us to say, "Enough"? We could take a very different course from others and, perhaps, lead the way by saying that suspended sentences are no longer to be used for CSAM, as they are not sufficient.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I have looked at your table on indecent-image-type offences from 2020-24. I went through the numbers of community sentences. What is your understanding of community sentences in that regard, and what do they mean for the perpetrator? What do they have to do? How does it impact the victim?

Ms Garland: I wish that I knew more about it. I do not know enough. I have been trying to explore and get into that area. I have no contacts in probation here or in England to give me much detail on it. My understanding is that, when judges hand down sentences, they frame them as, "Here is a chance for you to serve some type of sentence" — no one is arguing that it is a sentence — "that allows you perhaps to reckon with some of what you have done and go forward". They pay their dues in some way, and rehabilitation may be part of that. There may be unpaid work or other things. I do not know that that is sufficient to acknowledge the harm that a victim has suffered. One of the case studies that I sent you, which you will have seen, was of a GP here. At sentencing, the judge said, "We want to give you an opportunity to rebuild your life from this point on". You have to ask, "Where is the victim's opportunity?". He got a suspended sentence. That person was a GP; he was in a position of trust, so it is really interesting that he got only a suspended sentence.

Overall, community orders may need extra architecture around them to make them more meaningful. As I said, however, I do not know enough about them. Last week, the Ministry of Justice had a briefing on restriction zones that are being brought in. That is a new part of the Sentencing Act. My question to the policy advisers was this: for those specific offences, how will a physical restriction zone impact on children online? Some of the policy direction is focused on contact harm, whereas we need to think about community sentences: how strict are the conditions on the offender who has accessed the internet on a phone? Who monitors that? With the early release scheme in England, there has been an effort to exclude CSAM and TACSA offenders from early release. That is to be welcomed and applauded — it is good news — but we then hear that the electronic tagging system for those who will be released will not be fully operational. There are so many risks with all that.

I do not know what to say, Chair, other than more work is needed in that area if you are going to focus on community sentences and suspended sentences.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): The unduly lenient sentencing power, which is Part 4, applies only to the Crown Court. Doug raised this issue too. My understanding is that you feel that that should be looked at with regard to hybrid cases too, which would bring in the Magistrates' Court on specific cases. Are we sure that the offences that you are talking about today are hybrid cases?

Ms Garland: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): They are. Are you sure?

Ms Garland: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Right, OK.

Clause 1 is about the purposes and principles of sentencing. In your presentation, you said that you welcomed the inclusion of victims of crime. You will note that that comes under subsection (2)(b):

The words, "victims of crime", are in brackets. Would you support there being a specific subsection on victims of crime and their families in order to remove it from the public aspect?

Ms Garland: Yes. We would absolutely get on board with that. We are a victim-focused charity, so, yes, we would. When I mentioned that earlier, I said that it cannot be tokenistic. In a way, it is tacked on to a purpose of sentencing. It is not stand-alone, so will it have much meaning?

Sorry, to go back to the unduly lenient sentencing power, I noticed that the Bill has room for the Department of Justice to create regulations to broaden the scope. I am asking whether the Committee would consider trying to ensure that TACSA and CSAM, as hybrid offences, are brought within the scope of that.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): There is one other thing: denunciation is not mentioned in the Bill. The Commissioner Designate for Victims of Crime said that that should have its own line. Clause 1(2) states:

Should denunciation be in there on its own merits, with its own line, alongside the punishment of offenders?

Ms Garland: That is not something that I can comment on today. To be honest, it is not something that I have given a lot of thought to, so I would not want to give you an answer on the fly. I could take that away, consider it, and come back to the Committee.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Sure. One thing that has always worried me is:

To me, some of that will just not be ethical in some offences and for some victims. You would not want the offender anywhere near the person affected. I will need some reassurance on that and how a court would have regard for that because I just do not think that it would be appropriate in most cases, and not for sexual offences.

Ms Garland: The Committee has talked at length with other witnesses about restorative justice. We would have significant concerns about the use of restorative justice for those types of offences because the very nature of that offending involves grooming, so we would not be confident that offenders would not try to control that process for their own ends.

With regard to reparation, sexual abuse cannot be equated with a straightforward financial calculation to eradicate what happened to someone. That will never be the case. From a victim perspective, though, if there are opportunities for victims to get reparations through, for example, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, we are not against that, but it should be victim-led, and really victim-led, if they choose to do that.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Brian raised an important point that I had not realised. Clause 31, "Duty to consider failure to disclose", with regard to the Parole Commissioners, is about only murder and manslaughter whereas Helen's law in England, if I am right, includes not only murderers who have not revealed the whereabouts of their victims but paedophiles who abused children and did not identify the victims in the indecent images. There might, therefore, be something in that.

Ms Garland: That is interesting. That is news to me, but it does seem important to explore.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Will you look at that for us and come back with anything that you can find?

Ms Garland: Absolutely.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I could be wrong. I am just reading that off the cuff on the internet, so we could be wrong, but it is something that we need to explore. If you could help us with that in any way, that would be great. I do not like using personal names for naming laws, but Helen's law seems to be about the case of Helen McCourt, a 22-year-old woman from Merseyside whose body was never found, if that is of any help to you.

Ms Garland: Yes, I will look at that.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): If you could explore that for us, that would be great, and I would appreciate that. That is us done, Karen. Thank you very much for your time, and for answering our questions.

Ms Garland: Thank you very much.