Back to the Future on Sentencing: The 1996 White Paper
| Published date | 01 November 1996 |
| Date | 01 November 1996 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1996.tb02698.x |
REPORTS
Back to the Future on Sentencing: The
1996
White Paper
Ralph Henham”
Few government proposals
in
the recent troubled history of penal policy can have
generated such sustained debate and controversy as those contained in its latest
White Paper,
Protecting the Public: The Government’s Strategy on Crime in
Englandand Wales.’
The cautious note of optimism which greeted the 1990 White
Pape? has given way to a chorus of criticism and widespread disillusionment
among criminal justice academics and practitioners regarding the general direction
of penal policy since the Criminal Justice Act 1991. It is widely recognised that the
issues raised are both complex and deeply rooted in the sociological fabric of
contemporary British society, whilst
also
posing problems of constitutional and
penological significance. Although the political and sociological ramifications of
the debate cannot be addressed at length in a review such as this, it is against a
background of increasing managerialism and politicisation of sentencing policy4
that the following comments on the White Paper’s proposals are made.5
Honesty in sentencing
The most significant proposal in terms of its implications for the prison popula-
tion is the proposed abolition of parole and the early release arrangements
so
recently introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 1991.6 The White Paper, in
*Reader in Law, Nottingham Trent University.
Cm 3190 (London:
HMSO,
1996).
Crime, Justice and Protecting the Public
(London:
HMSO,
1990) Cm 965. In their review of the
White Paper, Wasik and von Hirsch concluded: ‘Although we have expressed a number of
reservations, we are sure that the White Paper is substantially along the right lines in advocating a
coherent set of guiding principles for sentencing based on desert or proportionality’; ‘Statutory
Sentencing Principles: The 1990 White Paper’ (1990) 53 MLR
508,
517.
For
a constructive appraisal, see Faulkner,
Darkness
and
Light: Crime, Justice
and
Management for
Today
(London: Howard League, 1996).
See Lacey, ‘Government as Manager, Citizen as Consumer: The Case of the Criminal Justice Act
1991’ (1994) 57 MLR 534; and Bottoms, ‘The Philosophy and Politics of Punishment and
Sentencing’ in Clarkson and Morgan (eds).
The
Politics of Sentencing Reform
(Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1995).
This review deals only with the main sentencing proposals in the White Paper. Although the White
Paper contains a separate chapter on community sentences (ch 7). it appears to abandon the idea of a
single integrated community sentence originally canvassed in the Green Paper,
Strengthening
Punishment in the Community
(London: HMSO, 1995) Cm 2780, in response to criticism of the
proposal (para 7.18 and see [I9961 CLR 35). Two minor changes are suggested in para 7.22: power
to suspend the operation of a community sentence pending the outcome of an appeal against
conviction
or
sentence, and the introduction of community sentences for fine defaulters. The
commitment
to
develop and extend the scope of electronic monitoring is repeated in paras 7.9-7.12.
The present provisions were only introduced on
1
October 1992 when the bulk of the Criminal
Justice Act 1991 came into force. In summary, parole was confined to prisoners sentenced to four
years
or
more. Where prisoners are sentenced to less than four years, the Secretary of State may
release them at the half-way stage but, if between such release and the period covered by the original
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