Enhancing Consistency in Sentencing: Exploring the Effects of Guidelines in England and Wales

Abstract

Objectives: The development and application of methods to assess consistency in sentencing before and after the 2011 England and Wales assault guideline came into force.Methods: We use the Crown Court Sentencing Survey to compare the goodness of fit of two regression analyses of sentence length on a set of legal factors before and after the assault guideline came into force. We then monitor the dispersion of residuals from these regressions models across time. Finally, we compare the variance in sentence length of equivalent types of offences using exact matching.Results: We find that legal factors can explain a greater portion of variability in sentencing after the guideline was implemented. Furthermore, we detect that the unexplained variability in sentencing decreases steadily during 2011, while results from exact matching point to a statistically significant average reduction in the variance of sentence length amongst same types of offences.Conclusions: We demonstrate the relevance of two new methods that can be used to produce more robust assessments regarding the evolution of consistency in sentencing, even in situations when only observational non-hierarchical data is available. The application of these methods showed an improvement in consistency during 2011 in England and Wales, although this positive effect cannot be conclusively ascribed to the implementation of the new assault guideline.

Sentencing disparities in the Czech Republic: Empirical evidence from post-communist Europe

“…The preferred quantitative approach to studying inter-court disparities is currently a multi-level modelling approach (Merrall et al, 2010; Pina-Sánchez and Linacre, 2016). This has recently been used in several studies measuring inter-judge and inter-court disparities (Fearn, 2005; Johnson, 2006; Merrall et al, 2010; Pina-Sánchez and Linacre, 2013, 2014; Roberts and Pina-Sánchez, 2015). Although this method has many advantages, its one disadvantage is that it does not enable direct comparisons across jurisdictions (Merrall et al, 2010; Pina-Sánchez and Linacre, 2016).…”

“…The third approach investigates whether disparity arises from different assessments of the numerous legal factors that influence the sentence. Examples of such factors are previous convictions (Roberts and Pina-Sánchez, 2015; Roberts and Von Hirsch, 2010), sentencing for multiple offences (Vibla, 2015) and aggravating or mitigating factors (Pina-Sánchez and Linacre, 2014; Roberts, 2014).…”

Nudge the judge? Theorizing the interaction between heuristics, sentencing guidelines and sentence clustering

“…The most recent evidence from England and Wales suggests that sentencers might indeed be following the processes outlined in the guidelines. For example, Pina-Sánchez (2015) and Pina-Sánchez and Linacre (2014) found that sentencing consistency increased following a reformatting of the guidelines which explicitly sought to achieve this goal. The new format provides a much longer and clearer list of aggravating and mitigating factors than its predecessor, corresponding with findings by Roberts et al (2018) that sentencers reported taking more factors into account after this change was introduced.…”

Mind the step: A more insightful and robust analysis of the sentencing process in England and Wales under the new sentencing guidelines

“…However, until recently, the almost complete absence of empirical assessments of these new guidelines cast doubts over what, if any, changes in sentencing practice had resulted from their introduction (Ashworth, 2013; Ashworth and Roberts, 2013; Padfield, 2013). The release of the Crown Court Sentencing Survey – a government dataset describing cases processed in the Crown Court – has reversed this trend, transforming the landscape from one dominated by theoretical commentaries to one that is more evidence based (see, for example, Belton, 2018; Fleetwood et al, 2015; Irwin-Rogers and Perry, 2015; Lightowlers, 2018; Lightowlers and Pina-Sánchez, 2017; Maslen, 2015; Maslen and Roberts, 2013; Pina-Sánchez, 2015; Pina-Sánchez and Grech, 2018; Pina-Sánchez and Linacre, 2013, 2014; Pina-Sánchez et al, 2016; Roberts, 2013a; Roberts and Bradford, 2015; Roberts and Pina-Sánchez, 2014; Roberts et al, 2018).…”

“…Most of the above cited studies have relied on regression modelling techniques to explore topics such as compliance with the guidelines, consistency in sentencing or the specific effect of certain guideline factors. For example, Pina-Sánchez and Linacre (2013) look at custodial sentence length for offences of assault, refuting the widely held proposition that there are extensive unwarranted disparities in sentencing between courts, while Pina-Sánchez and Linacre (2014) demonstrated that the application of the new assault guideline has led to an increase in consistency. Roberts and Bradford (2015) showed that there are aggravating and mitigating factors having an undue influence on the guilty plea discount, which raises questions about compliance with the guidelines.…”