- We shouldn’t have overenthusiastic claim of the effectiveness of sentencing, but we should force judges to make moral judgements on how they make decision, e.g. what weight to harm done previous convictions, etc
- 1. Need proportinalty – relative
- 2. Take nothing for granted – Taboo: 75% MPs hard to have objective debate, climate of fear of Mps, stifle debate, women in age of criminal responsibility = Taboo, sentencing = fear that they are soft on crime thru press, no public debate on issues – stay in prison too long
- Why it matters –
- 1. Public evaluation of wrongdoing
- 2. Enables loss of liberty, most coercive action that can be taken
- 3. Expenditure to criminals and public
- 4. Link between crime and sentence (be careful! Lower sentencing ~ crime go up, it is subject to debate and not true, marginal deterrence debate) – variation in sentence severity does not affect crime rates (e.g. Finland and Germany , reduce prison but no change in crime) =
- stunted view of social causation – punishment theory does not exist in social vacuum, popular conceptions interfere with policy (social, economic, political)
- E.g. Germany selection of judges and criminal edu is very different Study = Consensual politics, long term ~ less subject to populism, through agreement and compromise
- Competition politics – encouraged populism and less stability, direct appeals to public, short term Imprisonment relate to crime is a poor assumption, pale, difficult to sustain
- Censure of wrongdoing, evaluate seriousness/proportionality – unstable, malleable “proportion”, unsuitable = challenge this.
- Proportionality, moral desert – moral evaluation – take into account social context of inequality – if something is wrong, how wrong is it compared to other crimes and how should we signal it,
- e.g. maximum sentences by parliament (reviewed in 1970 by Churchill), difficulty in making value judgement, too complex, nothing has been done to review sentences –
- Patterns of thought depend on culture e.g swede, German, US, Max offenses in German is 15: unless death caused to another, and only 100 life sentences a year, whilst UK 700 a year
- Sentencing council guidelines = look at reappearing, less extreme, more frequently used – polling by criminology shows reverse of politicians and public = should involve them in punishing evaluation 3 groups = Property offences e.g petty theft = taking property, takes away property of person, punish in jail (bc we’ve done it before)~ depriving them of liberty, we shouldn’t use imprisonment. Hmm what about fraud?
- Women – increased prison population. There’s too many. Reconviction rate high especially for low incarceration periods. Especially if no threat 2 society. They’re going into jail because reoffenders.
- Better 2 have community service and be more sympathetic to lives = context
- Custodial offences = prison only offenses (only prison! No fine or loan possible) E.g Hugh and price. Mitigating factors not considered. All forms = require imprisonment because it’s the only way of coinage to condemn them
- Deterrence effect= also no evidence. Crosskey = hacked into celeb fb, change password, but “violation of privacy”= 8 months. Gassunis, 2013, 2nd hand clothing business, accidentally came across donation and was going 2 sell. Had 2 years due to insincerity to donors. – they all went to prison, bc people think that ONLY prison will condemn and denounce people who deliberately flout the law.
- 42 average petty thefts reconviction rate = All in jail. Failure of jails. But in corporate issues, things like publicity sanctions, remedial sanctions, other ways to show rejection exist
- Features of sentencing – judges don’t always spell out how they came to their judgements. Need line of argument. S
- PELL out punishment calculation
- Which major factors have bearing and why they have bearing and how much they have bearing
- E.g. this is required for discount for guilty plea, or racial aggravation
- E.g begging, soliciting prostitution, you won’t be put in jail for this Aggravating factor? (Targeting older people, previous convictions, is it a free for all? Should we set a criteria for how many years/calculating) Mitigating factors? This may be hard?
IB Wisdom 