The government cannot provide a complete statistical breakdown of prosecutions and sentencing for sexual offences over the past five years.
Minister for Justice and Home Affairs, Mrs Poole-Wilson confirmed the situation in a Tynwald answer MLP leader Joney Faragher.
The minister cited significant challenges with crime recording and sentencing data and explained that police recording standards often count a sequence of crimes against one victim as a single offence.
Additionally, when an offender is sentenced for multiple crimes, the total is recorded in aggregate, making a detailed breakdown impossible.
Setencings
However, Mrs Poole-Wilson was able to provide a list of individual case outcomes from 2020 to 2025.
These reveal custodial sentences for offences including rape and indecent assault ranging from 14 months to 12 years and 6 months.
A total of 41 individual sentencing outcomes were listed for sexual offence cases between 2020 and 2025 including eight in 2020, seven in 2021, five in 2022, 10 in 2023, nine in 2024 and two to date in 2025.
The minister also confirmed her department had not compared the island’s maximum penalties to other jurisdictions “due to lack of resource”.
Looking ahead, Mrs Poole-Wilson said, “I have asked officers to develop a consistent and coherent data set to allow for annual reporting of this important information.”
A review of the Sexual Offences and Obscene Publications Act 2021 is currently in progress.