Public attitudes to sentencing purposes and sentencing factors: An empirical analysis

Criminal Law Review

Volumn , Issue 11, 2009, Pages 771-782

  Roberts, Julian V ^a   Hough, Mike ^a   Jacobson, Jessica ^a   Moon, Nick ^a  

^a KING'S COLLEGE LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 72449133362     PISSN: 0011135X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (25)

1. J. Silvey, "The Criminal Law and Public Opinion" [1961] Crim. L. R. 349;
2. for a review of recent research
3. see J. V. Roberts and M. Hough, Understanding Public Attitudes to Criminal Justice (2005).
4. CJA2003 s. 142.
5. At the time of writing, legislation is pending to replace these bodies with a single organisation.
6. A. Ashworth, Sentencing and Criminal Justice, 4th edn (2005), p. 357.
7. See J. Jacobson and M. Hough, Mitigation: The Role of Personal Factors at Sentencing (2007).
8. See J. Paulin, W. Searle and T. Knaggs, Attitudes to Crime and Punishment: A New Zealand Study (2003) ;
9. J. V. Roberts and A. N. Doob, "Sentencing and Public Opinion: Taking False Shadows for True Substances" (1989) 27 Osgoode Hall Law Journal 491.
10. This brief article can only highlight the principal findings, and much has been omitted here. For example, our research included a sophisticated statistical analysis of public reaction to mitigation and aggravation known as a conjoint analysis, a full description of which can be found in the original research report.
11. D. Indermaur, "Puhlic Perception of Sentencing in Perth, Western Australia" (1987) 20 Australia and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 163;
12. A. N. Doob and J. V. Roberts, Sentencing: An Analysis of the Public's View (1983).
13. Unless otherwise stated, for all the questions discussed here, the number of respondents who responded "don't know" was 2% of the sample or less. For this reason we have excluded these respondents when calculating percentages.
14. The survey findings were echoed in the focus groups. When participants were asked to rank the importance of the five purposes of sentencing in the CJA 2003 they argued that all five were important-and also emphasised the inter-relationships between them. Perhaps the clearest finding to emerge was that the relative importance of the purposes of sentencing varied from case to case.
15. There was no significant demographic variation or as a function of victimisation history.
16. See the definitive guideline Overarching Principles: Seriousness published by the Sentencing Guidelines Council at http://www.sentencing- guidelines.gov. uk/docs/Seriousness-guideline.pdf [Accessed August 18, 2009].
17. CJA 2003 s.143 (2).
18. Public opinion research in this and other jurisdictions suggests that the public regard repeat offenders as both more culpable and more likely to reoffend
19. (see J. V. Roberts, Punishing Persistent Offenders (2008), Ch.8.
20. The 2007/08 sweep of the British Crime Survey found that 75% of the public expressed the view that courts were too lenient;
21. for prior findings see Roberts and Hough, Understanding Public Attitudes (2005), Ch.4.
22. See Jacobson and Hough, Mitigation: The Role of Personal Factors at Sentencing (2007).
23. See Roberts and Hough, Understanding Public Attitudes (2005), Ch.4.
24. Causing death by careless driving is a good example of an offence where the harm is very significant (loss of life) but where the culpability of the offender is relatively low-the offender has simply let his attention to the road wander, albeit with fatal consequences;
25. see J. V. Roberts, M. Hough, J. Jacobson, A. Bredee and N. Moon, "Public attitudes to sentencing offenders convicted of offences involving death by driving" [2008] Crim. L. R. 525.