Category: News and Views
Last year, David Blunkett the home secretary overhauled the system of sentencing in this country: there were to be more discounts for guilty pleas, and a sentencing guidelines council, made up of judges, social workers, probation officers and members of prosecuting authorities, was set up to bring sentencing closer to the public. How ironic, then, that the first set of guidelines produced on a serious offence i.e. that of murder, is so devoid of common sense in my opinion that it's unreal! Inspired by Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, it is now apparently the position that murderers who plead guilty at the earliest opportunity i.e. in the magistrates court at a procedure which is called plea before venue and not even part of the formal trial process, they shall spend a recommended ten years in prison before being considered for parole by the parole board. There are two problems with this that I'd like to highlight: first, it's at direct variance with the aims that parliament had in mind when introducing the sentencing guidelines council. This proposal has given rise to public fury and remonstrances from parliament on which is viewed by many to be a ridiculous situation that confirms that Lord Woolf has finally done what he has been threatening to do for years and lost his marbles. Sentencing is further away, rather than closer to, the public! sEcondly, and more seriously, there is a grave ethical problem with this: now, you may be someone who thinks that long sentences are wrong and serve no real purpose, or you may think that life would mean life, but whatever you think, this ethical problem is applicable to both schools of thought. If this proposal is implemented, it will mean that a person who pleads guilty at an early stage will get their overall sentence reduced by around 50 percent. I don't need to tell you guys that this is a massive discount! now imagine the following scenario: a person is accused of murder, is already mentally vulnerable and has never been in any sort of trouble before. he has been detained for 36 hours, hauuled before a court, detained for a further 36 hours, hauled before a court again, then detained for one further day before finally being charged. There then follows a lengthy period of incarceration on remand awaiting trial. Now imagine that this person is told: look, if you plead guilty, you will save money and you will receive a discount of up to half of you rsentence for accepting responsibility. Our imaginary person, let's say, is innocent, but the inducements are so heavily in favour of pleading guilty, that he does so. The result is that he has a conviction. can that really be right? Is it really ethical to, in effect, coerce guilty pleas from the innocent in the name of expediency? I wish my example were purely theoretical, but there is research that suggests that sometimes, the vulnerable plead guilty when they in fact are not. In my view, this latest nonsense on sentencing does nothing to address the problem, and in fact makes it worse. anyone share my concerns about this?
particularly interesting would be a perspective from someone living outside the UK. How do the systems of the US, canada or any other commonwealth jurisdiction approach early guilty pleas? does anyone know whethe rit influences your own domestic sentencing practices? I fear that this latest idiocy is going to make the UK a penological laughing-stock.