Political point-scoring should play no part in the sentencing regime, argues Paul Firth
Two speeches delivered in recent months, one by Sir Igor Judge and the other by the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, deserve to be widely read. Sir Igor, in his speech Current Sentencing Issues at Lincoln’s Inn, cheered all sentencers saying: “Sentencing a fellow human being is indeed an art, a human skill, a skill in humanity, not a science, and it is this skill, and its application, that is embodied in the possibly pompous-sounding phrase, ‘judicial discretion’.”
Both judges referred to the cost of various sentences, inevitably beginning with the cost of imprisonment. Sir Igor expressed what I fear might be the vain hope that “the potential cost of every piece of criminal justice legislation bearing on sentencing should be subject to the best estimate that can be made of cost”.
Lord Phillips was on firmer ground in his How Important is Punishment? speech to the Howard League for Penal Reform, encouraging a debate to “consider the extent to which resources should be devoted to funding, not merely imprisonment, but
