Legal Commentary Sentencing Youths: Distinctiveness and Individualism
| Date | 01 August 2013 |
| Author | Nigel Stone |
| Published date | 01 August 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225413492057 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Youth Justice
13(2) 161 –170
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225413492057
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Legal Commentary
Sentencing Youths: Distinctiveness
and Individualism
Nigel Stone
In the week during March 2013 that press reports1 recorded – usually in condemnatory
terms – the execution by firing squad in Saudi Arabia of seven young men, some of whom
had been juveniles (one being aged 15) at the time of their offence (armed commercial
robbery and looting), media reporting also expressed outrage2 concerning a 19 year-old
from the United States who had received the maximum custodial term permitted for a
juvenile under Japanese law (a minimum of five years and no longer than ten years), for
murdering a young woman by strangulation in a Tokyo hotel room. These news items
illustrate, in starkly contrasting ways, the dilemma any criminal justice system has to face
in determining whether and, if so, to what extent, the punishment should be tempered to
reflect youthful age, inexperience and other age-related factors that might impact upon a
young person’s capacity to appreciate the effect of their behaviour on others (relative
stage of maturational development, greater susceptibility to temptation and peer pressure,
the negative impact of adverse formative childhood experience and other issues that serve
to reduce culpability).3 This Legal Commentary revisits this enduring quandary in the
light of recent judgments in the Court of Appeal in England in respect of sentencing exer-
cises featuring more mundane though relatively serious youthful offending.
As a starting point for those less familiar with youth justice in the United Kingdom, it
may be noted that although certain offences carry a lower statutory maximum sentence in
respect of offenders aged under-18 (notably child sex offences4), the prevailing legislative
preference exposes young offenders to the same maxima as adult perpetrators, leaving
mitigation or amelioration arising from age to sentencer discretion. Additionally, some
disposals in England and Wales are distinctively designed to reflect age, whether as a
diversionary alternative to prosecution and conviction, or to remove the matter from the
youth court to a more flexible arena with scope to pursue more creative or restorative
justice (the referral order under the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act (PCC(S)
A) 2000 ss.16-32, as amended – in many instances a mandatory requirement), or as a
Corresponding author:
Nigel Stone, School of Social Work and Psychology, Elizabeth Fry Building, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK.
Email: n.stone@uea.ac.uk
492057YJJ13210.1177/1473225413492057Youth Justice Youth Justice
2013
Legal Commentary
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