Assisting and Advising The Sentencing Decision Process: The Pursuit of 'Quality' in Pre-Sentence Reports

Abstract

Pre-sentence reports are an increasingly prevalent feature of the sentencing process. Yet, although judges have been surveyed about their general views, we know relatively little about how such reports are read and interpreted by judges considering sentence in specifi c cases, and, in particular, how these judicial interpretations compare with the intentions of the writers of those same reports. This article summarizes some of the main fi ndings of a four-year qualitative study in Scotland examining: how reports are constructed by report writers; what the writers aim to convey to the sentencing judge; and how those same reports are then interpreted and used in deciding sentence. Policy development has been predicated on the view that higher-quality reports will help to ' sell ' community penalties to the principal consumers of such reports (judges). This research suggests that, in the daily use and interpretation of reports, this quality-led policy agenda is defeated by a discourse of judicial ' ownership ' of sentencing.

Street‐Level Bureaucracy, Interprofessional Relations, and Coping Mechanisms: A Study of Criminal Justice Social Workers in the Sentencing Process

“…Third, preliminary analyses of the observational and interview data were presented to the social work teams who took part in the project, and the social workers were invited to comment on our findings. Full details of the research methods used to investigate the judicial use and interpretation of the reports are provided elsewhere (Tata et al. 2008).…”

“…Rather, social workers relied on the use of “narrative” (see Halliday et al. 2008; Tata et al. 2008) in their attempts to influence judicial decision making.…”

“…The sentencing mentality of social workers was framed in part through an anticipation of what they thought the judge likely to read the report would regard as being within the appropriate range of possible sentences (Tata et al. 2008).…”

Risk, responsibility and reconfiguration

“…Despite the emergence of public protection as a priority, these objectives still include reducing the use of custody by offering credible community-based alternatives. Since reports are both the key entry point to community penalties and the prime opportunity to encourage consideration of the use of these sanctions, it is easy to see why they attract this level of investment and policy attention 6 (see Tata et al, 2008).…”

“…Dissonance between offenders' accounts and professional accounts called into question the trustworthiness of the offender and evoked more negative assessments (more of which below). When these confirmed or disputed accounts were finally committed to paper, social workers engaged in a complex process of editing which often aimed to weed out both irrelevant and incongruent information in an effort to construct a plausible and persuasive narrative (for more detail see Tata et al, 2008).…”