Table Of ContentSENTENCING GUIDELINES
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Sentencing
Guidelines
Exploring the English Model
Edited by
ANDREW A SHWORTH
and
JULIAN V ROBERTS
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
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Foreword
Everyone has a legitimate interest in the way in which society deals with those who
commit crime and developing a greater public awareness of sentencing practice –
together with increasing public confi dence in the outcome – has been an extremely
important aim of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales since its incep-
tion. I am therefore delighted to be able to provide the foreword to a volume that
focuses, in particular, on the work of the Council some two years after its creation.
It includes a wide range of views: these have an important role to play in highlighting
the many considerations involved both in sentencing decisions generally but also in
the approach to the provision of guidelines.
Th ere is an extremely useful overview of the background to the establishment
of the Sentencing Council, with a detailed analysis of the work of its predecessors,
the Sentencing Advisory Panel, established in 1998, and the Sentencing Guidelines
Council, which dates from 2003. Th ereafter, in addition to providing a valuable
comparison between the approach provided here and that across a number of other
jurisdictions, the contributors provide a detailed consideration of the ongoing evo-
lution of guidelines in England & Wales. Th is includes consideration of the way in
which the Council fulfi ls its statutory duty to consider the ‘impact of sentencing
decisions on victims of off ences’ and how its guidelines may enable the courts to
provide consistency in their approach to sentencing.
Th e Council has been extremely fortunate to have Professor Julian Roberts as one
of its members and, in his capacity as one of the Editors of this volume, he provides a
thought provoking analysis of the data collected during the fi rst year of the Council’s
Crown Court sentencing survey which, for the fi rst time, provides a rich seam of
information about the way in which judges use the guidelines to fashion the exercise
of their discretion as they pass sentence. Whilst the conclusions he draws from the
results of the survey are his own and not those of the Council, his consideration of
the extent to which there is compliance with and departure from the guidelines will
provide the Council with much to think about in the future.
At the time of writing this foreword, I have been Chairman of the Sentencing
Council for its fi rst three years and I remain as enthusiastic for its work as I was
when the Lord Chief Justice asked if I would accept the challenge of setting up
the Council from scratch, some six months before the Coroners and Justice Act
2009 brought it to life. Th e reason for my interest is easy to explain: I believe that
the Sentencing Council, with its wider remit than the structures it replaced, has a
signifi cant opportunity to contribute both to the law and practice of sentencing
and also to the wider public understanding of issues of sentencing. Th e Council has
always been clear that it is keen to raise and widen the debate about every aspect of
sentencing; whilst neither I (nor the Council) agrees with all of the views expressed
within it, this volume clearly encourages the continuation of the debate and it is
vi Foreword
to be warmly welcomed for that reason. I hope that it will provoke wide academic
interest along with further contributions to the Council’s work.
Rt Hon Lord Justice Leveson,
Chairman of the Sentencing Council of
England and Wales
Acknowledgements
Our acknowledgement is fi rst and foremost to the contributing authors of the
essays contained in this volume, many of whom also made presentations at the
Oxford seminar held at All Souls College, Oxford on 13 July 2012. We are also
grateful to the participants at that event for their feedback on the presentations and
to All Souls for hosting the event. Th e seminar was also generously supported by a
grant from the Fell Fund at the University of Oxford. Julian Roberts’ work on the
volume was also supported by a Leverhulme Major Fellowship. We would also like
to thank Gabrielle Watson for her meticulous assistance in copyediting the essays
and the staff of Oxford University Press for their work on the volume. Finally, we
are most grateful to Lord Justice Brian Leveson for taking the time from his judicial
duties to provide a foreword to the volume.
Andrew Ashworth
Julian V Roberts
Oxford, January 2013
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Table of Contents
List of Contributors xi
1. Th e Origins and Nature of the Sentencing Guidelines
in England and Wales 1
Andrew Ashworth and Julian V Roberts
Appendix 13
2. Th e Struggle for Supremacy in Sentencing 15
Andrew Ashworth
3. Exploring the Success of Sentencing Guidelines 31
Nicola Padfi eld
4. Sentencing Guidelines for Murder: From Political Schedule
to Principled Guidelines 52
Barry Mitchell
5. Victims, Sentencing Guidelines, and the Sentencing Council 71
Ian Edwards
6. Th e Defi nitive Guideline on Assault Off ences:
Th e Performance of Justice 86
Neil Hutton
7. Complying with Sentencing Guidelines: Latest Findings from the
Crown Court Sentencing Survey 104
Julian V Roberts
8. Remorse and Sentencing: An Analysis of Sentencing Guidelines
and Sentencing Practice 122
Hannah Maslen and Julian V Roberts
9. Th e Role of Public Opinion in Formulating Sentencing Guidelines 140
Mike Hough and Amy Kirby
10. Nothing Personal: Th e Impact of Personal Mitigation at Sentencing
since Creation of the Council 157
John Cooper
11. A ‘Decision Science’ Perspective on the Old and New
Sentencing Guidelines in England and Wales 165
Mandeep K Dhami
12. Comparing Sentencing Guidelines: Do US Systems
Have Anything Worthwhile to Off er England and Wales? 182
Kevin R Reitz
