Sentencing: A Social Process. By Cyrus Tata, Cham: Palgrave Pivot, 2020, 190 pp., £44.99

Date01 March 2021
AuthorESTER BLAY
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12284
Published date01 March 2021
DOI: ./j ols.
BOOK REVIEW
Sentencing: A Social Process
CY RUS TATA
Cham: Palgrave Pivot, ,  pp.,£.
Sentencing, how judges think, the workings of courts and judicial processes, and decision making
in the criminal justice field more generally are the focus of considerable scholarly attention and
policy reform efforts. Sentencing: A Social Process puts these in perspective and presents both a
criticism of dominant legal thought on sentencing and a defence of a sociological perspective to
better understand it.
Tataidentifies the two main traditions of sentencing thought: the legal-rational and the judicial-
defensive. In the legal-rational tradition, judicial discretion is inherently suspicious and, in order
to control it and render decisions more structured, rational, and predictable, transparency and
adherence to rules are seen as critical in the decision-making process. The judicial-defensive tra-
dition emerges as a reaction to the former and aims at protecting judges’ ownership of the deci-
sions and the space for judicial discretion, and conversely emphasizes the wisdom and pragmatic
sense of judges as well as the unique and incomparable nature of individual cases.
These traditions are apparently opposed, respectively advocating more and less restraint on
judicial leeway. However, as the book shows, both lines of thought are grounded in a common
ontological understanding of sentencing. This common understanding is based on the (fictional)
idea of the judge as a free individual who owns the sentencing decision. Thus, ‘the cosmos of
sentencing reflects and regenerates the liberal ideology of competition between self-possessed
autonomous individuals’ (p. ). The concept of private property is central to these ideas; decision
making belongs to the individual judge and therefore discretion is conceived of as a property of
the judge, something hehas a right to use without interference.
Tata thus convincincly translates Durkheim’s criticisms of the Anglo-Saxon philosophical tra-
dition into the field of sentencing. In his attempt to put forward a specifically sociological explana-
tion, Durkheim addresses some of the individualist and economicist assumptions at the basis of
the Anglo-Saxon philosophical tradition, and in particular in the work of Spencer.Tata adopts the
Durkheimian (sociological) view that it is not society that is a product of individuals, but rather
that it is individuals who are a product of society. Durkheim extends his criticism to the specific
individual on the basis of this philosophy. As Marx shows, this supposedly ‘natural’ individual
Tata makes a purposeful use of male and female pronouns in the book. The free individual who owns the sentencing
decision is a male in classical thought.
I. González Sánchez, ‘La sacralización del individuo utilitarista’ [‘The Sacralization of the Utilitarian Individual’] in
Anomia, cohesión social y moralidad: Cien años de tradición Durkheimiana en criminología [Anomie, Social Cohesion and
Morality: One Hundred Years of Durkheimian Traditionin Criminology], eds I. González Sánchez and A. Serrano Maíllo
() .
©  The Author.Journal of Law and Society ©  Cardiff University Law School
130 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jols J.Law Soc. ;:–.

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