Exploring the Impact of Sentencing Factors on Sentencing Domestic Burglary

The British Journal of Criminology

2017

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Intoxication and Assault: An Analysis of Crown Court Sentencing Practices in England and Wales

Lightowlers

The British Journal of Criminology

2017

“…Further studies have also found that, as the England and Wales guidelines require, sentencers generally give more weight to ‘Step One’ factors (i.e. those indicating seriousness) than to the additional aggravating and mitigating factors provided in ‘Step Two’ (Fleetwood et al, 2015; Irwin-Rogers and Perry, 2015; Lightowlers and Pina-Sánchez, 2017; Maslen, 2015; Pina-Sánchez and Grech, 2018). More recently, Pina-Sánchez et al (under review) found evidence that judges generally follow the step-sequence in the order prescribed within the guidelines.…”

Section: Sentencing Guidelines As Choice Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

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

Marder

Criminology & Criminal Justice

2018

Although it has long been acknowledged that heuristics influence judicial decision making, researchers have yet to explore how sentencing guidelines might interact with heuristics to shape sentencing decisions. This article contributes to addressing this gap in the literature in three ways: first, by considering how heuristics might help produce the phenomenon of sentence clustering, in which a significant proportion of sentences are concentrated around a small number of outcomes; second, by reflecting on the role of sentencing guidelines as a feature of the environment within which sentencing decisions are made; and third, by analysing the guidelines from Minnesota and from England and Wales, theorizing how their content might interact with heuristics to make clustering more or less likely. Ultimately, we argue that sentencing guidelines likely affect the role played by heuristics in shaping sentencing decisions and, consequently, that their design should be informed by research evidence from the decision sciences.

“…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).…”

Section: Consistency Of Approach Through a Sequence Of Stepsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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. Irwin-Rogers and Perry (2015) showed that Step One factors (those used to determine the seriousness of the offence) are more important than other mitigating and aggravating factors, with the exception of previous convictions.…”

Section: Consistency Of Approach Through a Sequence Of Stepsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Criminology & Criminal Justice

Brunton‐Smith

2018

The ‘England and Wales Sentencing Guidelines’ aim to promote consistency by organizing the sentencing process as a sequence of steps, with initial judicial assessments subsequently adjusted to reflect relevant case characteristics. Yet, existing evaluations of the guidelines have failed to incorporate this structure adequately, instead concentrating solely on sentence outcomes. We use multivariate multilevel models to offer new insights into the decisions made throughout the sentencing process. Focusing on cases of assault sentenced at the Crown Court we show that the level of compliance with the guidelines is high. However, we also show that some case characteristics are being unduly considered at more than one stage of the sentencing process, meaning existing studies may be underestimating their true influence.