The Decision to Imprison: Sentencing and the Prison Population

Abstract

How has this happened and why does it continue?Mike Hough, Jessica Jacobson and Andrew Millie analyse a complicated question in detail but with great clarity.Part, but only part, of the problem lies with the laws on sentencing which Parliament provides.The actual decisions are of course taken by judges and magistrates as they respond, not just to the merits of each case, but to the pressures which they perceive from public opinion and the media.We in the Prison Reform Trust and other charities in this field take up the continuous challenge of setting out the facts to the public and in particular to those who have the responsibility of passing sentences.We try to deal in facts rather than prejudices, believing that the present trends documented by the Home Office, instead of making us safer, continue to weaken our society.The work done by Mike Hough and colleagues gets behind the headlines to those facts and I am sure that their analysis will be widely studied and welcomed.

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