Free Law Dissertations - However, Until The Passing Of The Consolidating Statute, The Powers Of
However, until the passing of the consolidating statute, the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, there was a vast array of confusing and defective legislation that had siphoned off the discretionary sentencing powers of the courts (Thomas, 1997).
However, a number of obligations surrounding the passing of sentence are still to be found enshrined within the doctrine of the Criminal Justice Act 1991, as well as a number of additions to the legislative body that governs the law of sentencing, including the Criminal Justice Act 1993, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, however not all are required for the processing of sentencing for this offence.
2.Judicial Decisions
As well as locate the details of sentencing law, Counsel ‘s job is to provide guidance to the Magistrate on the direction of sentencing by providing previous judicial decisions that will aid the decision in favour of counsel’s interests to represent the offender.
Yet another role of counsel is to provide the court with guideline judgements as it was held in the case of R v Panayioutou that principles of sentencing from previous cases must be provided in order to allow for the court to uniformly continue, especially where there is cause for mitigation. This obligation is however reciprocal in that he sentencing judge must allow counsel to argue either for or against certain types of sentencing (R v Scott (1989) 11 Cr App R (S) 249) such as custody as opposed to community service. In the current case the gravity of the offence is not severe enough to merit a custodial sentence but consideration must be given to the nature of a community service sentence.
3.The work of academics
This is of course far less formal than the other two sources but the work of Dr D A Thomas (Cambridge University) is considered to be at the forefront of this field and is located mostly under the journal of the Criminal Law Review. C.Principle Exclusions for this case
The offender was not a dangerous offender as this was not the nature of the crime committed. This therefore means that criteria for dangerousness by way of incapacitate sentencing (PCC(S)A, s 79(2)(b)) and the subsequent lengthening of terms of imprisonment (PCC(S)A, s 80(2)(b)), as well as criticisms of the law of this area both after and before the enactment of the consolidating Act (von Hirsch. A, 1996 and also Clarkson. C.M.V, 1997) will not be necessary.
It will also not be necessary to examine the law and discussion of previous convictions (Wasik. M and von Hirsch. A, 1994) and, as the sentence passed in this offence was that of community service, no discussion of the threshold of custody both prior to (Ashworth. A and von Hirsch, A.
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