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Borderline sentencing: a comparison of sentencers’ decision making in England and Wales, and Scotland
journal contribution
posted on 2009-01-16, 14:41 authored by Andrew Millie, Jacqueline Tombs, Mike HoughThis article draws together findings from two related studies of
sentencing in England and Wales, and Scotland. It examines how
sentencers in the two jurisdictions differ in their sentencing
decision making, with a focus on cases on the borderline between
prison and a community penalty. The article suggests that, despite
differences in legal systems and criminal justice structures,
sentencers’ decision making in the two jurisdictions was remarkably
similar. In both jurisdictions they took account of a wide range of
factors in reaching their decisions, among which the legal category
of the offence under sentence was often subsidiary to other
considerations. The main difference between the two jurisdictions
was the much more dramatic rate of increase in the adult prison
population in England and Wales than in Scotland. Several possible
explanations are offered for this, including the literal and
metaphorical distance of Scotland from Westminster and the greater
impact of sentencing guidance south of the border—which has
probably had a largely unintended inflationary effect on the prison
population.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Citation
MILLIE, A., TOMBS, J. and HOUGH, A., 2007. Borderline sentencing: a comparison of sentencers’ decision making in England and Wales, and Scotland. Criminology and Criminal Justice, 7(3), pp. 243–267.Publisher
© SAGE PublicationsVersion
- NA (Not Applicable or Unknown)
Publication date
2007Notes
This article is Closed Access. It was published in the journal, Criminology and criminal justice [© Sage Publications] and is available at http://crj.sagepub.com/ISSN
1748-8958Language
- en