The approach of the courts to sentencing is far too slack. Discuss how far this statement reflects your attitude to the law and the role of the courts.
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smasha123 (student)
“The approach of the courts to sentencing is far too slack.” Discuss how far this statement reflects your attitude to the law and the role of the courts. It is necessary to ascertain what exactly being ‘too slack’ involves when it regards the courts which are intended to deliver justice to the victims of crimes. If a sentence is ‘too slack’ this suggests that insufficient reparation in some form is available to the victim, and that the offender receives an unduly lenient sentence. Generally, it is the media which create the perception that sentencing is too lax and lenient – this is often because it is only unfairly lenient cases which make the headlines. Publicising the outcomes of criminal cases can serve to reassure the public and increase their confidence in the criminal justice system, but it can also have the opposite effect. Public perception can be manipulated by the media into believing shock headlines, and often newspapers will carefully select which information they choose to sensationalise. It is essential to remember that both judges and courts follow strict guidelines regarding sentencing – what seems like the first exceptions will always make headlines and feed the public that negative perception. Each individual judge may differ in how they approach the law – for example: possessing a strict interpretation and giving a longer sentence, or having a loose interpretation – but essentially, each judge would still be required to act within their given guideline, which often derives from the law itself. The way in which the media
deliver their reports concerning justice could actually be considered ‘criminal’ in itself. The majority of newspapers follow a prescribed and formulaic structure to write their story about any case, which can be repeated in every prosecution regardless of the nature of the crime or who the defendant is. Its structure is as follows: Judge Y sentences defendant Z to X number of years. The prosecutor argues for >X years and the victim’s family is outraged at the farce. When they are interviewed by journalists, the family vociferously declare their horror at the judge, and it is the media which reverberates ...
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deliver their reports concerning justice could actually be considered ‘criminal’ in itself. The majority of newspapers follow a prescribed and formulaic structure to write their story about any case, which can be repeated in every prosecution regardless of the nature of the crime or who the defendant is. Its structure is as follows: Judge Y sentences defendant Z to X number of years. The prosecutor argues for >X years and the victim’s family is outraged at the farce. When they are interviewed by journalists, the family vociferously declare their horror at the judge, and it is the media which reverberates that sentiment. It is commonly assumed by everybody involved that the defendant should serve the sentence the prosecutor wanted or the victim demanded. Therefore, when a judge sentences the defendant to less than this amount of years, those same people assume that the judge is at wrong. Rarely would a journalist condemn a sentence that was too high because it is not what will sell their newspapers. In the same way, a reporter would not write how all of these lengths of defendants’ sentences are simply thoughtless arbitrary numbers delivered without any regard to what works effectively to deter re-offending rates and crime. A newspaper’s report will not reflect expert opinion regarding proportionality, e.g.: comparing non-violent drug sentences to sentences for violent crime, or measuring relative sentences across crime categories. Likewise, the media do not consider alternative approaches to sentencing, nor evaluate recidivism or consider whether drug treatment programmes may work more effectively in some circumstances than imprisonment. The number of years a defendant is sentenced to only reflects the public’s and prosecutor’s annoyance, and so therefore whatever the number was before, it seems it must be higher and harsher in the next case and with the next defendant. Essentially, there is no end because inevitably sentencing length will creep up to serve popular opinion which is rarely well informed. Previously, rehabilitation and deterrence was more important than retribution, and whilst there were indisputably many problems with that approach, in the very least it enabled a chance to discuss about what punishments made sense in relation to the crime. It could be discussed in terms of ensuring public safety whilst minimising recidivism at the same time as balancing all of the purposes that sentencing is intended to serve. Furthermore, it allowed criminal justice experts in numerous fields including judges, to participate in a thoughtful discussion about crime. In more recent decades, however, rehabilitation has been discredited and the sentencing focus has shifted to the single purpose of retribution. Everybody seems to have a say in ‘what punishment fits this crime?’, and what the public thinks about the crime and therefore, what the criminal ‘deserves’ , is shaped and inflamed by the media. The media are at least partly to blame for this shift in the purpose of sentencing. Take the hypothetical situation of an alcohol fuelled car crash which kills two of four passengers. The judge may sentence the defendant to five years, but the prosecutor may demand 9 years. A newspaper columnist would then rebuke the judge and suggest he was insensitive and unduly lenient for not imposing a longer sentence such as that which the prosecutor wanted. However, what the prosecutor wanted was not fair in terms of the guidelines judges follow. For example, for the aforementioned offence, the guidelines may suggest a sentence of three to five years, and so the judge would be correct in his judgement. Guidelines would be established by many different experts in the Sentencing Council and they stand in the court of law, and the judge always accompanies his sentence with reasoning for it. However, in contrast, the prosecutor cannot be monitored as closely as a judge. He simply picks a number of years to sentence somebody to and does not have to explain it any further than justifying it in the particular case. There aren’t many, if any, public, transparent guidelines for prosecutors, and there are no set standards. A prosecutor could, for example, easily choose mandatory minimums/ maximums for certain races/ ethnicities, and he cannot be easily reviewed for it. Previously, there were many limits imposed when sentencing had to bear some relationship to their outcomes, for example, what helped to prevent recidivism. However, now that the purpose of sentencing is geared towards retribution, there are few limits. Equally, on the other hand, recently in 2010, a new clause in the legislation for judges’ guidelines has allegedly given them a free rein in deciding which sentence to impose on a defendant, which could result in either very lenient and slack sentences or the polar opposite – very harsh sentences. In essence, the clause allows the judges to stray from sentencing guidelines if the court is satisfied that adhering to them would be ‘contrary to the interests of justice to do so’. Under this new statute, judges are barely bound to the legislation, which could result in ‘idiosyncratic sentencing’ and a diminished effectiveness of the guidelines. Whilst it’s important that judges have discretion and flexibility in sentencing, the very consistency, certainty, and predictability of sentencing is jeopardised in light of this clause. However, judges in the mainstream remain as rational and fair as is possible with regards to sentencing, as they wish to see a reasonable punishment for the defendant and justice for the victim, but they also wish to decrease the number of re-offenders. In this way, a judge would not usually be purposely lenient. Furthermore, the appellate courts policies things very tightly, and so if a sentence was too slack, a majority may push for a re-evaluation of the decision. To conclude, in my opinion the vast majority of judges uphold and interpret the law fairly in relation to the crime committed, and impose fair sentences. It matters how the media covers the individual case, and whether it follows the usual formula of what the prosecutor wanted being right, or whether it’s more a matter of emphasis. The press cannot deprecate mass imprisonment whilst regularly criticising judges who are making an effort to make reasonable distinctions between offenders.
by
smasha123 (student)
