The Justice Committee welcomes the
Sentencing Council’s draft General Sentencing Guideline, which is
intended to help sentencers when people are convicted of offences
for which no specific guideline exists, but makes several
observations and recommendations.
In June 2018, the Sentencing Council began its consultation on
the draft Guideline, along with a consultation stage resource
assessment. As a statutory consultee on draft guidelines, the
Committee carried out its scrutiny based on the responses of the
Council’s consultation.
The Committee’s observations and recommendations are set out in a
letter from the Chair of the Justice Committee, MP, to the Chair of the
Sentencing Council, Lord Justice Holroyde. The letter and Lord
Justice Holroyde’s response are published in today’s report.
The Committee’s main observations:
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The structure and format of the
guideline: The Committee welcomes the digital
format adopted for this Guideline, which helps sentencers
easily access expanded guidance on the assessment of
culpability and harm and on aggravating and mitigating factors.
The Council should investigate archiving older versions of
guidelines as a valuable resource in appeal cases where the
hearing takes place after the relevant guidelines have been
amended.
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Consultation stage resource
assessment: The Committee recognises that the
Sentencing Council is doing what it can within its limited
resources to assess the impact of guidelines. It hopes that
HMCTS would work with the Council to maximise the opportunities
arising from data capture linked to the ongoing and planned
digitisation of the courts. The Committee has concerns about
the possibility the General Guideline could lead to sentence
inflation, given that it does not contain prescribed sentence
levels but invites sentencers to consider the definitive
sentencing guidelines for “analogous offences”. The Council
should include more guidance on this point and the Committee
suggests the level of consistency in sentencers’ selection of
analogous offences be monitored.
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Age and/or lack of maturity: The
Committee welcomes the Council’s decision to include in the
draft Guideline an explanation of the mitigating factor “age
and/ or lack of maturity”, as recommended by its predecessor
Committee in its report on young adults in the
criminal justice system. “Young adults” should be defined
as those up to the age of 25 and the term “immature offender”
should be replaced with “young adult or otherwise immature
offender” to provide greater clarity to sentencers. The Council
should clarify the stage at which age and/ or lack of maturity
should be considered to avoid the risk of double counting. The
Committee calls for the MOJ to fund research into sentencers’
and prosecutors’ understanding of maturity, given the Council’s
limited budget for research.
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The five purposes of sentencing: The
Committee welcomes the Council’s decision to re-state the five
purposes of sentencing in the General Guideline and agrees with
a report by Professor Sir Anthony Bottoms that public
understanding, as well as that of sentencers, would be enhanced
by including additional explanatory text for each statutory
purpose, in particular how they relate to section 143(1) of the
Criminal Justice Act 2003.
Chair of the Justice Committee, MP, said:
“We welcome much of what is in the draft General Sentencing
Guideline, particularly in regard to digitisation, which will
make it much more user friendly. However, we have set out several
specific concerns and have published these today.
“It is encouraging that Lord Justice Holroyde sought to
assure us that the Council will consider our point on analogous
guidelines in its post-consultation deliberations, to guard
against any risk of sentence inflation. His response also states
that the Council will examine our observations and
recommendations on age and/ or lack of maturity. We think this is
of key importance to make sure young people who are not yet fully
able to appreciate the consequences of their actions do not
receive disproportionately heavy sentences. The Council also says
it will look at our observations on the five purposes of
sentencing.
“I look forward to a more detailed response and reassurances
when the definitive guideline is published later this year.”
