{"id":964,"date":"2020-08-16T12:57:26","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T12:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.wpcomstaging.com\/?p=964"},"modified":"2025-02-27T11:31:31","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T11:31:31","slug":"eliminating-sentencing-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/?p=964","title":{"rendered":"Eliminating Sentencing Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eliminating Sentencing Bias<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Over the last few years as I watched the news I\u2019ve seen movements and initiatives spring forth on topics ranging from gay rights to #metoo to trans-rights and Black Lives Matter. I used to pay scant attention to these movements because I couldn\u2019t see the problem – and why would I? I\u2019m a white, English-speaking straight man. But over the years, when I tried to see things from the perspective of those people affected by the issues I was generally met with hostility and harsh judgement. Often when I asked a question, in order to better understand, my words were perceived as a threat or slight. In the end I just stopped asking the questions and I opt out of most of the conversations.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But when it comes to the Black Lives Matter movement and the judicial system I think that there is a simple solution. The idea first came to me when I was involved in a Criminology Outreach program that had been organised by Bath Spa University which saw 10 criminology students working with 10 serving prisoners to address 6 key areas of criminal justice. My idea is blind sentencing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When a defendant is found guilty at the conclusion of the trial I suggest that their case be wrapped up and submitted to a sentencing panel for consideration. The information that this panel should receive would be extremely limited and could include:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The crime of which the defendant has been convicted<\/li>\n
  2. The age of the defendant<\/li>\n
  3. Previous convictions<\/li>\n
  4. Mitigating features, e.g. provocation<\/li>\n
  5. Aggravating features, e.g. hate crimes<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The sentencing panel should be required to hand down a sentence based on this limited information alone. \u2018Age\u2019 is a valid consideration because a 5-year sentence would represent a far greater proportion of the defendants remaining life expectancy to a 70-year-old than to a 20-year-old. A useful exercise would be to calculate the average sentence across a specific offence in a particular age group and identify the disparities between the average length of sentence received and those sentences handed down according to ethnicity, gender, postcode and family background.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Watching and comparing sentencing trends would be interesting. Would custodial terms increase or decrease? How would the length of sentences be affected? What a black youth from London\u2019s inner city attract a shorter sentence because the sentencing panel might worry about being too harsh on a white female defendant from a nice rural neighbourhood with a good family? Who knows – but at least it couldn\u2019t be called racist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Eliminating Sentencing Bias   Over the last few years as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[531],"tags":[37,70,71,359,419],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections-2","tag-age-relevant","tag-blind-justice","tag-blm","tag-prison-life","tag-sentencing-bias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2219,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions\/2219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}