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Using National Health Interview Survey data from the second six months of 2020, this Early Release report provides preliminary estimates of the percentages of adults and children living in homes with only wireless telephones.

To date, the literature on sentencing reform has largely focused on western jurisdictions, particularly the United States and Europe. Developments in other parts of the world, particularly on the African continent, have been overlooked. This article explores sentencing in a lesser-known African jurisdiction: Ethiopia. The focus of the essay is upon the issue of structured sentencing. Sentencing in Ethiopia, like most jurisdictions, has historically been a very discretionary stage of the criminal process. That has now changed with the introduction of a comprehensive guideline scheme. Although sentencing guidelines in the US and England and Wales have been the subject of much critical scrutiny, nonwestern guidelines have attracted very little attention from scholars. Although there are parallels between the structure of the Ethiopian system and guidelines in other countries, there are also important differences. Since they are more developed than guidelines in adjacent countries, the Ethiopian guidelines constitute a model for other regional nations, including those with a post-colonial legacy. After providing an overview of sentencing in Ethiopia, the article describes the origin, nature, and consequences of the Ethiopian guidelines. The guidelines provide sentence ranges for different levels of seriousness for many crimes, and also prescribe a methodology to guide courts sentencing for offences for which no such guidance exists. They also provide some structure for the judicial use of mitigating and aggravating factors at sentencing. We conclude by identifying some deficiencies of the current guidelines and propose some specific remedies.

Changes to the sentencing process in Canada are finally imminent. A number of reports in recent years have called for reforms in the area of sentencing and parole. In 1987, the Canadian Sentencing Commission released its final report Sentencing Reform: A Canadian Approach. This was followed in 1988 by the report of the Daubney Committee following its investigation into sentencing and parole. In addition to these proposals, the now-defunct Law Reform Commission of Canada, the Department of Justice and the Ministry of the Solicitor General all published reports containing reform proposals. In this article, the authors review recent events in the area of sentencing since the publication of the report of the Canadian Sentencing Commission. After a brief introduction, four principal policy issues are examined: (i) statutory statements of sentencing purpose; (ii) sentencing guidelines; (iii) the future of release on parole; (iv) the creation of a permanent sentencing commission for Canada. For each issue, the article critically examines the position taken by major players in the area of criminal law reform. The article concludes with a brief examination of Bill C-90, which recently received first reading, and which will be the object of further parliamentary scrutiny in the fall of 1992. In a subsequent article, the authors offer their own proposals to reform the sentencing of offenders in Canada., Le processus de la détermination de la peine au Canada est en train de changer. Dans la dernière décennie, le système pénal a vu plusieurs rapports sur le sujet. En 1987, la Commission canadienne sur la détermination de la peine a publié son rapport Réformer la sentence : une approche canadienne. L’année suivante, le Comité permanent de la justice et du solliciteur général (le Comité Daubney) a fait une étude sur la détermination de la peine, la mise en liberté sous condition et d’autres aspects du système correctionnel. En 1990, le gouvernement fédéral a proposé des modifications à la détermination de la peine et aux services correctionnels fédéraux. En 1992, il y avait deux projets de loi, le C-36 et le C-90. Le premier a reçu l’approbation royale en juin, et le deuxième a subi sa première lecture en même temps. Dans cet article, les auteurs résument les événements les plus importants. En particulier, ils examinent quatre sujets critiques : i) la déclaration du but et des principes de la sentence; ii) les lignes directrices en matière de détermination des sentences; iii) la libération conditionnelle; iv) la création d’une commission permanente des sentences au Canada. Les auteurs concluent avec un court aperçu du projet de loi C-90 que le gouvernement fédéral vient de publier. Dans un autre article, ces auteurs proposent leurs propres réformes.

This paper explores the ways that sentencing guidelines, properly constructed, can promote proportionality at sentencing. The essay uses the sentencing guidelines created in England and Wales to illustrate the potential benefits, and challenges, associated with this method of structuring judicial discretion at sentencing.

The scholarly literature on sentencing reform has largely overlooked Africa. The paucity of legal scholarship is particularly striking with respect to Tanzania, one of Africa's largest and most populous countries. This article explores the first significant sentencing reform in Tanzania's history. In 2020, the Tanzanian judiciary issued a comprehensive set of sentencing guidelines for courts to follow. Until this point, sentencing was a highly discretionary stage of the criminal process. Courts had wide discretion, and the Tanzanian penal code offered very little guidance with respect to the exercise of that discretion. After providing a brief summary of the sentencing regime, we explore the innovative guidance contained in the reforms. At the conclusion we discuss the extent to which the Tanzanian reforms reflect core African values of Ubuntu, or more specifically in the case of Tanzania, Ujamaa, the philosophy promoted by Tanzania's first President, Julius Nyerere.

How does the passage of time affect sentencing? Increasingly, courts around the world are being required to sentence offenders for crimes committed years or even decades earlier. Prevailing conceptions of harm and culpability change over time. Policy makers concerned with punishment and sentencing should be sensitive to changes in the absolute and relative seriousness of crimes as well as the absolute and relative severity of punishments. Ordinal rankings of offenses have evolved over the past 50 years, as has our understanding of the impact of various sanctions. Issues raised by sentencing for crimes committed much earlier illustrate the need for a time-sensitive approach. Should defendants be sentenced according to standards prevailing at the time of the offense or according to current standards? Courts in different jurisdictions have taken different positions on this question. Applying current standards amounts to retroactively re-calibrating the offender's culpability. This essay argues that offenders should be judged by the standards prevailing when they took the decision to offend. A time-sensitive approach would apply the sentencing standards of the earlier time, yet also consider time-relevant mitigation and aggravation in the period since commission of the offense. The offender's conduct and the victim's suffering during the period are both relevant factors. Although the emphasis in this essay is upon proportional sentencing, on any model the offence and the offender should never be treated as a moment in time, caught like an insect in amber. The passage of time often changes our evaluation of the offense and the offender, and when this occurs the nature of the sentence should change. The analysis also extends to long-serving prisoners, whose sentences should be reviewed after years have passed in case they are no longer deemed proportionate.

The consequences of a person’s prior crimes remain after the debt to society is paid and the sentence is discharged. While the practice of using prior convictions to enhance the severity of sentence imposed is universal, prior record enhancements (PREs) play a particularly important role in US sentencing, and especially in guidelines jurisdictions. In grid-based guidelines, criminal history constitutes one of the two dimensions of the grid. The enhancements are hard to justify. Retributive theories generally reject the use of robust, cumulative record-based enhancements. Research into recidivism suggests that the preventive benefits of PREs have been overstated. The public support the consideration of prior convictions at sentencing, but there is convincing evidence that people are less punitive in their views than are many US guideline schemes. PREs exacerbate racial disparities in prison admissions and populations, result in significant additional prison costs, undermine offense-based proportionality, and disrupt prison resource prioritization.

Although women represent a small minority of the prison population in all nations, it has long been a concern that custody is overused with respect to female offenders. Reducing the number of women in prison has therefore emerged as a policy priority in many western nations, including the United Kingdom. This article evaluates a range of sentencing strategies to reduce the number of women in prison, on the grounds that their experience of the sanction is disproportionately severe. The challenge is to achieve a reduction in women’s imprisonment without compromising the fundamental sentencing principles of equity and proportionality. Although no jurisdiction has launched a sentencing initiative with this specific aim, the international sentencing literature offers insight into the most effective methods by which reductions may be achieved. Informed by the principle of equal impact, which underpins gender-specific sentencing, we explore policy options in two principal domains: (1) statutory provisions to eliminate or restrict judicial discretion to imprison female offenders; and (2) sentencing guidelines to structure judicial discretion in gender-sensitive ways. We conclude by considering the likelihood of implementing the options.

This chapter shows how sentencing data can be used to quantify the substantial fiscal impacts of high-magnitude criminal history enhancements, overall and with respect to the problematic aspects of those enhancements identified and discussed in previous chapters. It uses data from Minnesota and several other states as examples because of the excellent sentencing data available for those states. The chapter first examines the total fiscal impact (added bed needs and costs) that results from the sentence-enhancing effects of criminal history on prison commitment and prison duration decisions. It then quantifies the fiscal impacts of the identified problematic aspects of prior record enhancements: disproportionately severe prison durations imposed on high history offenders, imprisonment of nonviolent offenders recommended for prison solely because of their elevated criminal history scores, imprisonment of aging offenders who are recommended for prison due to their high history scores, and racially disparate sentences that result from criminal history enhancements.

This chapter examines the question of whether and when prior convictions from many years past should no longer be considered at sentencing. The chapter first surveys the varying “look-back” and crime-free “gap” rules found in American guidelines systems, noting that many jurisdictions have no look-back limits for some or all offenders. This discussion also examines the question of when the look-back “clock” starts to run, in applying each of the existing rules—that date could be as early as the date of the prior sentencing, or as late as discharge from probation or parole. The chapter then considers the ways in which different approaches to look-back relate to the punishment rationales—offender risk and culpability—that are thought to justify criminal history enhancements. It also presents a summary of recent research surveying public opinion about the desirability and formulation of look-back limits. The chapter concludes with proposals to limit look-back.

Sentencing guidelines first emerged in the United States in the late 1970s. Sentencing commissions now exist in many states and at the federal level. Other common law jurisdictions have been much slower introducing greater structure for courts at sentencing. In recent years, however, a number of countries have now created definitive sentencing guidelines. This chapter explores the structure and impact of sentencing guidelines in the jurisdiction outside the US that has the most developed guidelines. Sentencing guidelines were first introduced in England and Wales in 1998 with the creation of the Sentencing Advisory Panel. Statutorily binding guidelines now exist for most common offenses in this jurisdiction. The grid-based approach exemplified by the Minnesota guidelines has been rejected in all other countries. In light of this, the English guidelines, which take a quite different approach to guiding sentencers, are the only developed alternative. Indeed, the English guidelines have been adapted and implemented in a number of other jurisdictions including South Korea, Scotland, Macedonia, and several gulf states. This chapter compares the English guidelines to the US grid-based systems, and summarizes the latest research exploring the impact of the guidelines on sentencing practices and other key indicators including public confidence.

Sentencing guidelines were an exclusively American enterprise until recently. Since 2004, however, other countries have joined in. Contrasting approaches are exemplified by systems developed by the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission and the Sentencing Council of England and Wales. Minnesota’s guidelines are set out in grids that categorize cases by offense and criminal history. Each cell sets out ranges of sentences that are presumed to be appropriate. The English guidelines are step-by-step decision trees, one for each principal offense category. Each jurisdiction created an approach that fits its sentencing environment. The Minnesota grids are more restrictive and generate high levels of judicial conformity and consistency. The English guidelines allow greater discretion, possibly at the cost of consistency. However, the English approach provides ampler guidance on use of different dispositions, sentencing of multiple crimes, appropriate reductions to reflect guilty pleas, and other subjects. Neither the Minnesota Commission nor the English Council has been particularly self-critical. Minnesota’s main grid has changed little since 1980. England’s guidelines have evolved considerably, but the council has ignored calls to play a more active role in controlling the use of custody and hence the size of the prison population.

In recent years, a range of western jurisdictions has introduced reforms designed to restrict and guide judicial discretion at sentencing. The reforms enacted include mandatory sentencing laws and guiding statutes prescribing sentencing purposes and principles as well as important aggravating and mitigating factors. However, formal guidelines are the most promising and well-studied innovation. We may now add China to the growing list of countries that have recognized the utility of guidelines. Over the past decade, China has slowly developed sentencing guidelines for its courts. The new guidelines contain both general directions with respect to the determination of sentence as well as specific numerical guidelines for common offences. The guidelines do not follow the approach taken by the US schemes, many of which employ a two-dimensional sentencing grid. Instead, China has adopted a strategy consisting of “Starting Point” sentences which are then adjusted by the court to reflect relevant mitigating and aggravating factors. This approach is much closer to the guidelines developed in England and Wales and those proposed but not yet implemented in New Zealand and Israel. In this article, we explore the new Chinese guidelines and provide a limited comparative analysis with guidelines in other jurisdictions. England and Wales is selected as the principal comparator since it has developed and implemented a comprehensive system consisting of both offence-specified guidelines as well as generic guidelines.

Most people assume that criminal offenders have only been convicted of a single crime. However, in reality almost half of offenders stand to be sentenced for more than one crime. The high proportion of multiple-crime offenders poses a number of practical and theoretical challenges for the criminal justice system. For instance, how should courts punish multiple offenders relative to individuals who have been sentenced for a single crime? Should a court simply determine a specific sentence for each individual crime and then impose the total sentences on the offender? If this happens, an offender convicted of a large number of crimes of low seriousness will receive a sentence comparable to that which would be appropriate to a single very serious crime. Such an outcome would violate the principle of ordinal proportionality in sentencing. This book discusses a range of questions relating to multiple crime cases from the perspective of several legal theories. It considers questions such as the overall proportionality of the crimes committed, the temporal span between the crimes, and the relationship between theories about the punitive treatment of recidivists and multiple offenders. Contributors representing six different countries and the fields of legal theory, philosophy, and psychology offer their perspectives to the volume, broadening the scope beyond that of the United States. The chapters in this volume therefore contribute to international and domestic efforts to promote a more principled approach to sentencing offenders convicted of multiple offences.

Sentencing policies routinely assign harsher sentences on repeat offenders, yet we know little about public attitudes toward recidivist sentencing premiums – beyond the predictable finding that people are more punitive when the offender is a recidivist. This article summarizes findings from a survey which explored public attitudes to prior record sentencing enhancements. The research addressed public reaction to two key inquiries (1) whether older priors should carry less weight at new sentencing hearings; and (2) whether juvenile priors should be counted at adult sentencing hearings. Many guidelines count all prior convictions forever, and juvenile priors are almost always included in the offender’s criminal history score. Are these practices consistent with community views? Results indicate that in contrast to current practice in the U.S. guidelines jurisdictions, the public significantly discounts older priors, and favor disregarding at least some juvenile priors. The policy consequences for sentencing commissions are discussed.

The turnover of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership at the 18th Party Congress provides an opportune time to examine the future of US-China relations. Characterized by a blend of competition and cooperation, this relationship generally has been stable. The South China Sea (SCS) dispute, however, has the potential to fracture the relationship partly because of China’s conflict with the Philippines, a close American ally, over the Spratly/Nansha Islands. A study of the Spratly/Nansha Islands dispute provides one way to weigh the prospective impact of China’s leadership transition on China-Philippines-US relations and thus China-US relations. This article contends China’s leadership transition exacerbates the dispute and creates problems for China-Philippines and China-US relations, but that domestic and international interests will drive China and the US to contain the risk of serious conflict.

The English summer riots of 2011 resulted in the criminal justice system having to process an unprecedented number of offenders in a short timeframe. This study explores sentencing practice in the wake of the riots using the 2011 Crown Court Sentencing Survey. A multilevel model was implemented to specify the probability of receiving a custodial sentence for offences of commercial burglary. This model allows exploring differences in sentencing before and after the riots. An increased probability of receiving a custodial sentence in the post-riot period was identified. An increase in variability was also detected, changing from a state of almost perfect consistency to one in which substantial variation was observed between courts. Custodial rates for burglary increased to a level associated with more serious offences, thereby undermining the principle of proportionality. This, as well as the increased dispersion between courts, challenges other principles such as legal certainty and transparency.

The authors take a closer look at the current sentencing laws for murder and argue the need to change them. Expanding on the proposals described in the recently published book, Exploring the Mandatory Life Sentence for Murder, the authors provide a more detailed explanation for the new framework. The proposals suggest a new method of sentencing, and discuss how primary and secondary mitigating and aggravating favors can play a role in forming the suggested scheme. This article suggests that this method would constitute a more principled approach compared to mandatory life sentencing, by achieving higher levels of proportionality, greater consistency and restraint in the use of custody. While these proposals focus on the sentencing regime in England and Wales, the authors argue their relevance for other countries that also impose a mandatory life sentence framework. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

In 2012 the Knesset approved a new sentencing law. Israel thus became the latest jurisdiction to introduce statutory directions for courts to follow in sentencing. The approach of the United States to structuring judicial discretion often entails the use of a sentencing grid with presumptive sentencing ranges. In contrast, the Sentencing Act of Israel reflects a less prescriptive method: it provides guidance by words rather than numbers. Retributivism is clearly identified as the penal philosophy underpinning the new law, which takes a novel approach to promoting more proportionate sentencing. Courts are directed to construct an individualised proportionate sentencing range appropriate to the case in hand. Once this is established, the court then follows additional directions regarding factors and principles related to sentencing. Although other jurisdictions have placed the purposes and principles of sentencing on a statutory footing, this is the first such legislative declaration in Israel. The statute also contains a methodology to implement a proportional approach to sentencing as well as detailed guidance on sentencing factors. This article describes and explores the new Sentencing Act, making limited comparisons to sentencing reforms in other jurisdictions – principally England and Wales, New Zealand and the United States. In concluding, we speculate on the likely consequences of the law: will it achieve the goals of promoting more consistent and principled sentencing?

Sentencing in England and Wales has evolved in a direction apart from other common law countries. Although sentencing problems found in many Western nations are present, legislative and judicial responses have been very different. The use of custody rose steeply in the 1990s and has remained stable around that level in recent years. Crimes of violence and sexual aggression have, however, attracted increasingly longer sentences. The other principal changes are a steep increase in indeterminate sentence offenders, now accounting for some 19 percent of the prison population, and a striking rise in the volume of suspended sentences that has reduced the use of community sentences rather than terms of imprisonment. Net widening has therefore occurred. The principal distinction between England and most other jurisdictions is that statutorily binding guidelines now exist for both magistrates’ and higher courts. Unlike most US guidelines that assign offenses to levels of seriousness within a single sentencing grid, the English guidelines are offense specific. The Sentencing Council has also issued “generic” guidelines applying to all categories of offending. The guidelines have been evolving for over a decade now and cover most common offenses. Growing, but still limited, research suggests modest positive effects on consistency and proportionality in sentencing.

Sentencing guidelines have been slowly evolving in England and Wales since 1998. Definitive guidelines now exist for all common offences. This jurisdiction is the only one outside the United States to develop formal, numerical guidelines which are presumptively binding on courts. Despite their unique status - as the only alternative to the grid-based schemes found in many US states - the English guidelines have attracted almost no attention from sentencing scholars. This article describes the latest developments in England and Wales. As a result of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 much has changed: a new departure test has been created, and the old statutory bodies have been replaced by a single new Council which has issued a new format of guideline which will become the model to replace the old format. These important changes are discussed and some lessons drawn for other jurisdictions seeking to structure sentencing without resort to the two dimensional sentencing grids found across the United States. © The Author(s) 2012.

Sentencing guideline schemes require courts to sentence within the guidelines - or give reasons why a different sentence is appropriate. Most US schemes require courts to find 'substantial and compelling' grounds for departing from the guidelines. The duty of a court with respect to sentencing guidelines in England and Wales changed significantly in 2010 as a result of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. This article explores the evolution of the duty of courts to comply with the English sentencing guidelines. As will be seen, the language of the duty of a court provision has become more robust: henceforth, courts 'must follow' definitive guidelines rather than merely 'have regard to' them. At the same time, the government significantly increased the range of sentence within which courts must sentence. The essay provides some international context, drawing upon experiences in the jurisdiction in which guidelines have been longest in existence, and explores the limited compliance statistics collected in England and Wales to date. The consequences of the latest changes for sentencing in England and Wales are discussed. © The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

A considerable body of scholarship has explored the jury as a legal institution but community reaction to the institution and function of the jury has not, to date, been the subject of a review. The present article fills this void by addressing a number of important questions about public attitudes to the jury. The focus is upon public attitudes to the criminal jury in England and Wales, although limited comparisons are made with public opinion in other jurisdictions. The results demonstrate widespread support for, and confidence in, the criminal jury, both in this country and in other common law jurisdictions. The research record also demonstrates strong public opposition to proposals to restrict the right to trial by jury. There is some evidence, however, that support for the right to trial by jury may decline in the context of offenders charged with terrorism‐related offences.

This article present statistics on remand in custody in England and Wales. Currently, these statistics are spread across a wide range of government statistical publications, making it challenging to determine trends. We demonstrate that decisions to remand in custody are not a major contribution to prison overcrowding. However, it is important from perspectives both of human rights and economy to keep trends under close review, and to search for better ways of reducing the remand population in prisons. At the end of the article we review a number of strategies designed to reduce the remand population in this jurisdiction.

Nigel Walker described prior convictions as ‘the most obvious example of aggravation’ (1985, p. 44), and there certainly is great intuitive appeal to taking previous convictions into account. Most members of the public believe that offenders with previous convictions should be punished more severely, particularly if the priors are the same as the current conviction. (For findings and discussion, see Roberts and Hough, 2011; Roberts, 2008, chapter 8.) Thus, when asked to sentence offenders with different numbers of prior convictions, the public respond more puni-tively to recidivists compared to first offenders.

What do we know about the practice of sentencing in England and Wales? The answer, until relatively recently, was not very much. The explanation for this lack of knowledge lies primarily in the limited statistics and sporadic research record. Although empirical studies have been conducted for many decades now (e.g., Hood, 1962; 1972; 1992), over the decade between 1995 and 2005, only a handful of major empirical studies of sentencing were conducted (e.g., Tarling, 2006; Mason et al., 2007; Flood-Page and Mackie, 1998; Hough et al., 2003; for discussion and reviews of earlier empirical research in sentencing, see Ashworth, 2003; Roberts, 1988; Blumstein et al, 1983).

This chapter explores trends from the Ministry of Justice sentencing statistics (available at www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly). Understanding sentencing patterns is complicated by the fact that offenders often appear for sentencing having been convicted of several offences. Sometimes the offender has been charged with multiple crimes arising from the same incident; sometimes the offender will be charged with a single offence but will ask the court to take a number of others into consideration. Offenders may ask a court to impose punishment for crimes for which they have not been charged in order to clear their account as it were, perhaps because they are aware that at some point charges will be laid. The other reason for asking for other offences to be taken into account is that although additional punishment will be imposed, the offender is likely to benefit from some reduction for having freely conceded the crimes.

Much of the scholarship on legitimacy and criminal justice has focused on the ways that perceptions of legitimacy are shaped by contact with criminal justice professionals, notably the police. This chapter explores the relationship between the nature of the sentencing regime and public perceptions of penal legitimacy, or what we refer to as “empirical legitimacy ” (see Hinsch, Political legitimation without morality, (pp. 39–52). London: Springer, 2008). Part I explores public attitudes to sentencing and the reasons why the public in many countries may perceive their sentencing system to lack legitimacy. Part II explores ways of enhancing public perceptions of sentencing legitimacy. This includes the outline of what a “high legitimacy” sentencing regime would look like. In order to be perceived as legitimate, a sentencing regime needs to contain certain essential features. It must be (and must be perceived to be): (a) clear and transparent; (b) consistent in application and therefore predictable; (c) sensitive to the input of all relevant parties; (d) grounded in sound principles. Finally, we argue that the sentencing system must be communicated to the public in an understandable fashion in order to avoid erroneous expectations. The mere existence of sound sentencing principles is insufficient to ensure a high degree of empirical legitimacy.

This article reviews public opinion research relating to imprisonment. Thefocus is upon British attitudes, but wherever possible we place findings from this countryin an international context. Most members of the public report little familiarity with theprison system – few people report having had any direct contact with a penal institution.A common finding around the world is that most people believe that prison conditions arequite easy; this belief helps to explain low public levels of confidence in the prison system.Despite these trends, the public does not wish to make prison life harsher merely for thepurpose of punishment. People want and expect prisoners to improve their lives whileinside, although there is widespread scepticism that rehabilitation is possible in today’sprisons. Although the traffic of people in and out of the prison gates today is large,nevertheless the prison is a silent world still shrouded in mystery. (Blom-Cooper1976, p.72) Despite the efforts of legislators to counter the problem, prison popula-tions are stable or rising in most western jurisdictions (see below). Oneexplanation for this state of affairs is the apparently strong public supportfor imprisonment as a sanction. Judges and magistrates feel underpressure to respond to public pressure on this issue (see Hough, Jacobsonand Millie 2003). However, relatively little is known about public viewsregarding imprisonment, as the emphasis in the public opinion literaturehas been upon sentencing rather than the nature of custody per se.Weknow that when asked to sentence offenders convicted of serious crimes ofviolence, most people support the imposition of a term of custody. It isequally clear from several reviews that the public believes the sentencingprocess is too lenient (for example, Cullen, Fisher and Applegate 2000;Roberts and Stalans 1997; Roberts 1992) and also that people in differentcountries underestimate the severity of current court practices (forexample, Roberts and Hough 2005; Roberts 1998; Mattinson and

The wide-ranging Criminal Justice Act of 2003 introduces a number of changes to the sentencing of offenders in England and Wales. One of the most significant changes is that the purposes of sentencing are set out in legislation. The statutorily listed purposes include punishment, the reduction of crime, rehabilitation, protection of the public, and reparation. In addition, the Act creates, for the first time, a Sentencing Guidelines Council with a mandate to develop sentencing guidelines. The criminal history provisions of the new Act mean that an offender’s previous convictions will henceforth carry significantly more weight at sentencing. The manner in which this is to be achieved echoes the use of criminal history in many of the U.S. sentencing guideline schemes. These reforms are likely to transform sentencing practices in Britain significantly. Before reviewing the relevant provisions of the new Act, however, some discussion of their origins is necessary.

Surveys conducted over the past twenty years in several English-speaking countries reveal that most members of the public subscribe to a number of misperceptions about juvenile crime and justice. Regardless of actual trends, significant majorities believe youth crime to be increasing, and most people have quite negative views of youth courts. The public display considerable ambivalence with respect to juvenile justice. While strong majorities favor punishing violent juveniles with the same severity as adults, there has always been considerable support for rehabilitation. There is a clear consensus among scholars that public concern about youth crime, particularly violent crime, has been a driving force behind reforms that facilitated the transfer of accused juveniles to adult criminal court and made penalties harsher for offenders sentenced in youth court.

Statutory reforms of the juvenile justice system came to Canada in 2003 when the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) became law. This article reviews the principal sentencing provisions and, in particular, the purposes and principles that are now codified as a result of the new legislation. The legislation attempts to reduce the number of young offenders sent to prison while facilitating the imposition of harsher sentences on a small number of juveniles convicted of the most serious offenses. The YCJA moves youth court sentencing closer to sentencing as it is conducted in adult court but also maintains some important differences between the two levels. These reforms are likely to reduce the number of young persons sent to prison in Canada and change the composition of the juvenile prison population by reducing the number of young offenders incarcerated for minor crimes or property crimes.

All Western nations have passed mandatory sentencing legislation that removes or greatly curtails judicial discretion. These mandatory sentencing laws have proliferated in recent years with predictable consequences for prison populations. A response to public demand for more severe sentencing is one of the justifications for mandatory sentences of imprisonment. In addition, politicians use mandatory sentencing legislation to enhance their standing in the eyes of the public. Politicians appear to assume that the public is strongly supportive of these laws, though scientifically valid surveys are never cited to support these assumptions. This article reviews the international findings from surveys that reveal that the public is deeply divided about mandatory sentencing. Part of the reason for this is that there is more support for proportional sentencing than for utilitarian goals, such as deterrence or incapacitation. In addition, survey data suggest that the electoral advantage of promoting these laws has been considerably overstated.

This article explores three sanctions contained in the 2002 Criminal Justice Bill which follows upon the 2002 white paper Justice for All. The Bill creates a Sentencing Guidelines Council to develop sentencing guidelines, and defines three dispositions applicable to sentences of imprisonment under twelve months: ‘Custody Plus’, the suspended sentence of imprisonment, and the intermittent sentence of imprisonment. These reforms constitute a significant step for the sentencing process in England and Wales, and are in part a response to the 2001 Halliday Report. The changes (among others) may well have an important impact on the prison population in England and Wales, which in October 2002 reached a record level. Since the suspended sentence of imprisonment bears close resemblance to the conditional sentence of imprisonment introduced in Canada in 1996, the article makes comparisons between the two sanctions.

The high rates of Aboriginal admissions to custody have been noted by Commissions of Inquiry, all levels of government, and Corrections texts in Canada for some time. In the most recent year for which data are available (2000–2001), Aboriginal offenders accounted for 19% of provincial admissions and 17% of federal admissions to custody. This article examines provincial custodial sentenced admissions for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal offenders since 1978, when national statistics including the ethnicity of the offender were first published. Particular emphasis is paid in this analysis to recent trends during a period in which Parliament and the Supreme Court have tried to address the problem, the former by statutory recognition of the unique nature of Aboriginal offenders, the latter by judgments interpreting Criminal Code sentencing provisions introduced in 1996. The findings suggest that little progress has been made in reducing the number of Aboriginal sentenced admissions over the past few decades. Although the volume of Aboriginal admissions to custody has declined since 1993–1994, non-Aboriginal admissions have declined at an even faster rate, suggesting that specific policy changes are not responsible for the Aboriginal decline.

In the summer of 2001, the Home Office issued the Report of the Sentencing Review containing over 50 recommendations to reform the sentencing and parole systems in England and Wales. The White Paper, Justice for All, was published in 2002. The proposals constitute the most significant reform package in decades. A number of these proposals - such as the creation of a detailed sentencing guideline scheme, new sentencing options and recommendations to improve public knowledge of sentencing decisions - could well have a salutary impact on the sentencing process. However, the heart of the reform package contains an attempt to achieve the impossible: to reconcile within the same guiding statute (and sentencing guideline scheme) the conflicting sentencing philosophies of desert and utilitarianism. This article explores some consequences of the criminal record provisions by reference to the experience with sentencing reform in North America.