All very good points, although it would be as well for the authors to admit some bias. Asking judges to vote in favour of reducing judicial discretion is ... well, turkeys, Christmas, etc.
Is the idea behind this that there can be a wholesale reduction in sentences, as is needed because there is no prison space, but the govt can 'blame' the new commission so as to appease the average Daily Mail leader-writer?
No the idea behind this is to further the government's agenda to control everything including the courts. We already have the "prosecutors" giving out conditional cautions. With a sentencing grid the way is open for court clerks to deal with entire cases and allocate sentences. The only thing that stands between state controlled life are the judiciary(they already control the police) - once that's circumvented we are doomed!
Where to emigrate to, then? Zimbabwe is at least sunny.
"The American dream would result in a nightmare in England and Wales"
... I love it !
I agree and have nothing to add. I particularly liked the strong wording of paragraph 9 of the Judges' response.
As just a simple member of the public am I to understand that the length of any prison sentence would basicaly be determined by the availability of a suitable space for the length of the the proposed sentence.If this is the case could we expect in the future the scenario of a judge informing the defendant that the sentence for his crime should be four years but due to rationing he will have to serve just two.If you carry this to its logical conclusion we will eventually end up with increasing incidence of crime being followed by shorter and shorter sentences.--------Please tell me that I have misunderstood all this or am I going mad?
Jerym,
You haven't gone quite mad but you aren't too far from spotting the truth.
As I understand it, the length of a custodial sentence for each offence would be fixed by this commission and judges could not exceed it. That maximum would be reviewed annually by the commission in the light of how many prison places are likely to be available.
So a crime that attracts 2 years now might attract 1 year or possibly 3 years if sentence is passed in 2009.
Is the idea to adjust length of sentence to keep the prisons full? So, if crime dramatically reduces, you could end up with a 10 year sentence for littering?
As I understood earlier comments, the Sentencing Commission will only impose maximum sentences, not minimum ones. So we can all still happily litter without consequence.
I blogged thus a while ago in another place:
Prisoners in the USA - over 2'300'000 of them - account for a gnat's whisker short of 1% of the population.....of the Land of the Free. England and Wales show a rate of 0.3%, while Scotland, with 0.16% already jails more than twice as many pro rata as the Nordic countries or Ireland.
So maybe we should be looking less far westward for hints on how to reduce the prison population.
Anonymous - if the government gets away with this one, littering will be the least of your worries as you contemplate life in jug - or at least until someone comes along who has overfilled their wheelie bin, then you will get let out on an early release scheme.
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