The battle between the Lord Chancellor and the Sentencing Council over ‘two tier’ sentencing guidelines escalated this morning, with the publication of two letters. The first, sent by Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood a week ago, makes clear, powerful arguments about principle. She explains that she considers this to be a “matter of policy”, which should be determined by those who are “accountable to the public, both in Parliament and at the ballot”. The Lord Chancellor remarks that the disparity in sentencing outcomes is “real” but that “it is the responsibility of Government”.
She goes on to demonstrate that she understands precisely how toxic and dangerous the Sentencing Council’s approach is. The Council is supposed to “promote public confidence in the criminal justice system”, but their new guidelines are “particularly corrosive” in giving the “appearance of differential treatment before the law”. The Lord Chancellor is wise to identify this risk. If members of the majority ethnic group in the UK come to believe that the justice system is biased against them the consequences for public order and the safety of minority groups could be very grave.
The Lord Chancellor makes it very clear that she supports Pre Sentence Reports (PSRs) being used in every case where they are useful, and is creating more capacity in the probation service towards this end. This is also wise. Judges should have as much information as possible to inform their sentencing decisions. If someone is a sole carer for a child or vulnerable adult, then the court should be made aware of that before deciding whether a prison sentence is appropriate. Similarly, issues around coercion or mental health may affect how a judge sentences a guilty person.
The issue is that the Sentencing Council is seeking to make these PSRs available disproportionately to some groups it has identified as being at risk, while ignoring groups such as adults who’ve been in care who make up 25% of all prisoners.
All the Lord Chancellor asked of the Sentencing Council was that it remove the list of specific ethnic, cultural and religious groups who should receive a PSR as a matter of course.
It has taken Lord Justice William Davis, Chairman of the Sentencing Council, a week to write another of his excessively long, procedure-obsessed letters. I’ve read it so you don’t have to. He makes a cleverly-worded but misleading claim about PSRs, asserting that “frequently the information provided” will make people more likely to go to jail. While I’m sure that in some cases this does happen, the Government’s own analysis conducted in 2023 makes it clear that people who receive a full PSR are less likely to go to prison as a result.
Three pages in, Davis explains that he considers “no errors were made”, and “the Council could see no basis on which it should revise the guideline because of the process”. Again, the judge seems to think that a decision must be good if the appropriate procedure has been followed.
He makes no effort to engage with the Lord Chancellor’s excellent points about public confidence in the justice system. Perhaps he thinks such grubby matters as public opinion are beneath him and the Council. Davis concludes by making it clear that the Council is not going to budge one inch.
The Lord Chancellor has said this morning that she is “extremely disappointed by the Council’s response. All options are on the table and I will legislate if necessary”. She’s right to be disappointed, and she would be right to legislate. These rules come into force in a week. The Sentencing Council has made it clear that it has no regard for the Lord Chancellor’s office, the principles of democratic accountability or public opinion.
We need and deserve a justice system which serves the democratic will, not one which is forced upon us by unaccountable judges. I hope the Lord Chancellor legislates immediately to bring the Sentencing Council to heel.
David Shipley has sold fork lift trucks, worked in corporate finance, produced a film and served a prison sentence for committing fraud. He now campaigns for prison reform and works as a prison inspector. You can find his website here.
Stop Press: Keir Starmer has now confirmed he is ready to change the law to block the two-tier sentencing rules, with Downing Street saying on Friday that “all options are on the table”, including emergency legislation. The spokesman added that Mahmood is “reviewing the role and responsibility of the Sentencing Council”, and did not rule out the body being abolished entirely if the matter is not resolved.
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Now we know who is in charge – and it’s not our elected MPs.
So fire the Sentencing Council and recruit and carefully select a new one. What’s the prob?
Nobody needs a Sentencing Council.
This reminds me of Teresa May, who refused to deport a single Third World criminal during all her years in charge of the Home Office, because she said it was all the fault of the EU, and she was helpless. Diddums.
But this Pakistani Muslim woman has been given two top government posts, as Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor (why?), and is in total control of the farcical “Sentencing Council” set up only a few years ago, and has the power to hire and fire all its members. So all these letters and pathetic handwringing are just like Teresa May, pretending she has no power.
How did Great Britain manage to survive for centuries WITHOUT ANY SENTENCING COUNCIL?
ABOLISH IT.
Abolish the entire thing and consider de-barring all the member judges, they ahave proven they are not fit to serve as judges.
Too biased, too partisan.
Yes, and the 52,741 laws that have been introduced to the UK from the EU since 1990 alone just defies belief, added to all the other UK laws on the books. And more & more laws are added every year, micromanaging every detail of our God-given existence on this planet.
My own view is that we should sack the entire judiciary, abolish every law, and start again from scratch, with the Magna Carta and the 1689 Bill of Rights.
As for crime and punishments, we don’t need lawyers. Let local citizens decide on how to deal with criminals, as they did in ancient times.
Interesting that many MPs are lawyers who make laws for them to sit in judgement upon. Perhaps lawyers should be banned from parliament as a conflict of interest.
Absolutely right you are! Like that new female Reform candidate who’s been a magistrate for a decade and said she’s been “politically active” all that time. So handing out sentences using her own political agenda…
Where’s the impartiality supposedly dealt out by the judiciary at all levels? Non-existent, as the British Patriots know after being imprisoned for hurty words, or imprisoned in solitary with Muslim Terrorist Murderers for a mere civil offence worthy of a suspended sentence or an open prison.
In the old days, MPs were respected local citizens from many walks of life, who could be relied upon to defend local interests and fix local problems. Nobody needs lawyers as MPs, because the lawyer MPs don’t write the laws anyway, just leave it to others.
And nobody need laws that take more than one page to describe, instead of these huge tomes of tens of thousands of words for each law, often with sinister things hidden in the small print.
You forgot the bit about hanging the judges.
Or the lawyers.
Or both.
Billy Shakespeare got it right eh?
And Charles Dickens.
Exile to the Third World country of their choice would be a better punishment, in my view.
Yes, revive the British Constitution with an updated Magna Carta and Bill of Rights and plaster it all over our rotten institutions.
Your assertions may sound daft (heretical even) to many, the deeply indoctrinated, but you’re absolutely right. When something is beyond economic repair the only solution is the scrap it. We have natural and common law and all matters, of merit, can be resolved within those basic precincts.
Your final sentence sums it up perfectly:
“We have natural and common law, and all matters of merit can be resolved within those basic precepts.”
Foist with its own petard…
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/sentencing-and-the-council/about-the-sentencing-council/history/
…The Sentencing Council was established by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 to prepare sentencing guidelines. In preparing guidelines, the Council must have regard to:
Guilty as charged on every count. Take it down.
Yep, another New Labour creation designed to remove accountability from parliament. Interesting in that the problems these bodies are causing are now impacting our commie government, somewhat like enshrining ECHR into law. But again after 14 years of Tory governance not a thing done to deliver us from the evil created by Blair et.al.
Not “foist”, but “hoist”.
“Hoist with his own petard” is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase’s meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown (“hoist”, the past tense of “hoise”) off the ground by his own bomb (“petard”), and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice.”[1]
It’s a tfpo.
No BSW, can’t plead typo. Thank you, Heretic, for Shakespearean correction of lifelong commenter error – in mitigation, “foist” also makes verbal sense for being blown up by your own bomb.
Well and nobly said, Art Simtotic! We all learn from each other, every day. In fact, I’m glad you made that mistake, because in looking up “foist” to make sure that I myself understood it properly, I found that I’d been making a mistake about it for donkey’s years!
I always thought “foist” was having something like Net Zero thrust or inflicted (foist or foisted) upon us, but here’s what the etymology dictionary says:
“foist (v.) 1540s, probably from Dutch vuisten “take in hand,” from Middle Dutch vuist “fist” (see fist (n.)). Earliest sense was cheating at dice by concealing a loaded one in the palm of the hand with the intention of introducing it into play; general meaning “introduce surreptitiously, work in by a trick” is from 1560s. Related: Foisted; foisting.”
So thanks for inspiring me to discover my own mistake!
Win-win all round!
In the US Davis would be out of his office by Monday morning although an equally far left piece of slime from the legal bunch would issue an injunction to protect him.
These judges are not very bright, are they. That was a suicide note if ever I saw one.
More violent prisoners probably being let out early. But where is this over-crowding happening, because they never actually specify? I read this whole article and nowhere does it state that the new category C prison is male or female. Weird, it’s almost like they presume we should know…
”The justice secretary has not ruled out shortening the sentences of violent offenders in a drive to create more space in an over-stretched prison system.
Speaking to Sky News, Shabana Mahmood MP said the government wanted to follow the example of Texas in the US, where she said a “good behaviour credit scheme” allows offenders to earn an earlier parole hearing.
Ms Mahmood was speaking at the opening of HMP Millsike in East Yorkshire – a brand new nearly 1,500 capacity prison, built as part of a government plan to create 14,000 new prison spaces by 2031.
The new Category C jail is focused on rehabilitation, with skills and training for inmates to try and help them get jobs when they leave prison.”
https://news.sky.com/story/government-wont-rule-out-shortening-sentences-of-violent-offenders-to-free-up-prison-space-as-it-opens-new-jail-13337036?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter
”Mistakes were made”. ”Lessons will be learnt”. Yes, you can ban ‘Zombie knives’, Starmer, but banning chisels might prove a bit less realistic;
”A man killed a father-of-one just hours after being released early from prison under the government’s scheme to reduce overcrowding.
Liam Matthews, 26, was freed from HMP Holme House on the morning of September 18 last year before taking part in a fatal knife attack on Lewis Bell later that same day.”
https://www.gbnews.com/news/prisoner-released-early-labour-killed-man-hours-after-being-set-free
I can’t wait for our ‘east of Greece’ Judge to confer a large sentence for the drug taking white son of a Lord or an MP and see how they react, and how quickly they will work behind the scenes to have the sentence changed.
I had to delete the daily sceptic today. Please start writing about positive pro British anything. Thank you.
The judiciary are just another institution infested by people who don’t like the indigenous population of this Island. Who is actually running this god forsaken country?
The next government needs to rescind all the powers given to the judiciary since Bliar immediately.
if not, there will come a time of civil war. The argument against this is not that it’s unfair to the majority of citizens, but that it might be dangerous to minorities if the majority kick off.
in other words, white lives don’t matter.