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

The British Journal of Criminology

Gosling

Chung

et al. 2019

Self Cite

Sentence severity has increased in England and Wales in recent years. The causes of the increase remain unclear. One possible explanation relates to the introduction of sentencing guidelines, which seem to coincide in time with the increase in sentence severity. To date, investigations of this hypothesis have been limited to simple exploratory analyses or to specific offences. We use a new scale of sentence severity-developed using Thurstone scaling and the participation of 21 magistrates-and time-series modelling to explore whether a causal effect can be attributed to seven different guidelines. We corroborate the existence of an increase in sentence severity; however, we do not find conclusive evidence pointing at the guidelines having caused it.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Have The England and Wales Guidelines Affected Sentencing Severity? An Empirical Analysis Using a Scale of Severity and Time-Series Analyses

The British Journal of Criminology

Gosling

Chung

et al. 2019

Self Cite

“…For example, the timing or the location of the offence are applied to account for very diverse settings without clear guidance about which locations might represent an aggravating factor. And there is considerable debate over the extent that being under the influence of drugs or alcohol should be used as an aggravating factor (Dingwall, 2006; Lightowlers and Pina-Sánchez, 2017; Padfield, 2011). Second, the treatment of previous convictions as a Step Two factor in spite of its vast importance in deciding sentence severity (Roberts and Pina-Sánchez, 2014) seems to be something against which judges are rebelling.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the outset, we drew attention to the new wave of studies that resulted from the publication of the CCSS, transforming sentencing research in England and Wales into a more empirically based discipline. These recent contributions have shed new light on important topics such as proportionality (Fleetwood et al, 2015); consistency (Pina-Sánchez, 2015; Pina-Sanchez and Grech, 2018; Pina-Sánchez and Linacre, 2013, 2014), individualization (Roberts et al, 2018), severity (Pina-Sánchez et al, 2016), compliance with the guidelines (Roberts, 2013a; Roberts and Bradford, 2015) or the use of different case characteristics (Belton, 2018; Irwin-Rogers and Perry, 2015; Lightowlers and Pina-Sánchez, 2017; Maslen, 2015; Maslen and Roberts, 2013; Roberts and Pina-Sánchez, 2014). Added to this, we have demonstrated that unique features of the CCSS can also be exploited to estimate accurately: (1) the specific contribution of each case characteristic on the sentence outcome, something that was previously considered impossible by many sentencing scholars, and the CCSS founders at the Sentencing Council for England and Wales; 10 (2) the degree of unwarranted disparities at different stages of the sentencing process – for the case of Step One decisions those disparities were estimated after controlling for all relevant case characteristics; and (3) the undue influence that different case characteristics might have across the sequence of steps configured in the guidelines, which opens a new and more insightful approach to the study of compliance with the guidelines.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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%

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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

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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.

“…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

Self Cite

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.