SENTENCING GUIDELINES

Should sentencing guidelines in England and Wales be expressed in numbers or in words?

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Mandatory Sentences of Imprisonment3

Crime Sentencing in England and Wales4

Regional Criminal Court and Magistrates Court4

Impact of sentencing (long and short) on crime5

Increasing transparency of court proceedings9

England and Wales Parole10

Justice in the United Kingdom11

Conclusion14

References15

Should sentencing guidelines in England and Wales be expressed in numbers or in words?

Introduction

There are few mandatory prison sentences in England and Wales. Some have been introduced in recent years in response to populist pressures and the growing public concern regarding certain specific offenses such as burglary. In England and Wales, the sentencing has traditionally followed a policy based on just deserts, with higher penalties for specific categories of offenders.

The sentencing for adult offenders in England and Wales will change significantly in the years following the reforms introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 which received Royal Assent in November 2003. This legislation, while re-enacting some existing provisions, enshrined in law the goals of sentencing and some of its principles. It also established a mechanism to develop guidelines on the sentencing to be issued by the Sentencing Guidelines Council newly created for the first time in England and Wales. These provisions in the Act reflect, in part, the contents of the Home Office Sentencing Review, chaired by John Halliday, leading to production of a report in 2001 as well as a book Government White published the following year.

The Criminal Justice Act (2003) requires a lot of goals that sentencing courts must consider when sentencing an offender:

art. 147 states that any court dealing with an offender in respect of his offense must consider the following goals with respect to sentencing:

the punishment of offenders;

reduction of crime (including its reduction by deterrence);

reform and rehabilitation of offenders;

public protection;

the fact, for offenders to make reparation to those affected by their offenses.

The other important change in the philosophy of sentencing introduced by the Criminal Justice Act concerns the role of previous convictions. If the offender's background is sufficiently recent and relevant to the current sentencing by the courts, each previous conviction should be treated as an aggravating circumstance.

The relevant section provides as follows:

Arts. 143 In considering the seriousness of an offense ("the current offense") committed by an offender who has one or more prior convictions, the court must treat each of these convictions as an aggravating factor if (in the case of this sentence) he considers it reasonable to do so with particular regard to:

the nature of the offense to which the conviction and its relevance to the current offense, and

time that has elapsed since the conviction.

By requiring courts to take account of multiple (and potentially conflicting) objectives of sentencing and giving an offender's prior convictions involved more and more importance, the Criminal Justice Act (2003) could ensure in a large measure that the sentencing in England and Wales is away from a model based on the principle of proportionality. In one provision, the law attempts to maintain the ...