OFF THE GUIDELINES JUDICIAL SENTENCING

 

05. Jun. 2010. – 14:04:49

The judiciaries` sentencing powers have long been a political dog for the government`s bones. The bones are limitless in number and varied in content. When the dog starts showing restlessness it is usually given something to chew on. A motto for Magistrates` Courts could be or rather used to be "local courts, local JPs, local justice." All that ended in 1939. The rural population decreased. Deference to a local hierachy based on perceived class differences was shattered fifty years ago to be replaced by the worship of wealth and those who achieved it. Mass immigration lessened the bonds of a common historical memory which many would say was beyond its sell by date in any case. In the last twenty years owing to economic arguments not needed here high streets achieved such homogenity that one could be forgiven that without any sound a high street in Luton could just as easily be in Dudley. Magistrates are appointed locally to national standards of competence and approval and that is as it should be. But sentencing could be argued to be a different matter.

For many years there have been committees of "the great and the good" formulating the appropriate sentences for appropriate offences and offenders these "guidelines" to be applied nationally with the argument commonly levelled against NHS treatments and outcomes that "we don`t want a post code lottery in sentencing". I would ask why not? If as is revealed in the press almost weekly an NHS treatment in eg Manchester will extend a patient`s life by two years yet in Birmingham that treatment is not available would one prefer a Manchester post code or a Birmingham post code? It could be said that all treatments should be as Manchester post codes. 

The newly formed Sentencing Council differs from its predecessor the Sentencing Guidelines Council insofar as sentencers "must follow" the guidelines unless it would not be "in the interests of justice." That phrase is open to interpretation and I am quite sure it will be widely quoted in the future perhaps in The Sun or Daily Mail both in praise and criticism of an "off the guidelines" judicial sentence.