Successful Sentencing Appeals—An Analysis
| Author | Paul Robertshaw |
| DOI | 10.1177/002201830306700308 |
| Published date | 01 June 2003 |
| Date | 01 June 2003 |
| Subject Matter | Comment |
Successful
Sentencing
Appeals-
An Analysis
Paul Robertshaw*
Abstract
This article considers successful appeals against sentence from
the Crown Court to the Court of Appeal 1996-2002. After weighting for
caseload volume it became apparent that there was a wide range in the
success rates between courts; also variation in the rate of reduction of
incarceration. Within this framework individual (unnamed) judges were
considered. The typical judge
had
one appeal against sentence upheld
against
him
during the six years,
but
45 had between
one
per year
and
eight per year. The impact of these judges on their courts' appeal rate was
analysed. Comparison was made between 'severe'judges and otherjudges
in relation to four types of offence. Attention is drawn to the problem of
information and monitoring of this aspect of judicial practice.
This study could
not
have been done
without
access to a
new
resource'
to which I
had
access in providing technical assistance to Mark Easton's
documentary team at Channel Four television. Immersing oneself in
this data source revealed some interesting quirks in
the
State's records of
Court of Appeal activity in deciding on successful appeals against sen-
tence from the 80 Crown Courts in England
and
Wales. The records are
by no means complete, for example the
name
of
the
appellant or
the
date of hearing
and
the name of judge are
not
consistently known; even
the
court appealed from may not be ascertainable. That admitted, there
is a counterbalance in
that
the
number
of records of successful appeals
available for
the
purposes of this study was large: 1,490 from April 1994
to April 2002, defined as involving areduction in carceral time or
alteration
to
anon-carceral
penalty-usually
the former. Within the
1,490 cases is a subset of 1,210 cases which
are-at
least for
the
purposes
of this
article-complete.
There were at least 300
more
that
could
not
be
used because of missing data.
It
must be stated at
the
outset
that
this
enables
the
making of
minimum
but
not definitive statements,
and
that
the relativities discovered are as important as
the
brute 'facts'.
The range of successful appeals ranged from one (in five courts)
through
amedian of
II
at Guildford
and
Swansea to 102 at Manchester;
25 courts had 25 or more successful appeals against their sentences
(SSAs). Such crude facts do not allow for differences in sentencing
caseload. Toallow weighting for these differentials
the
Lord Chancellor's
Department provided me with
the
totals of sentencing decisions (includ-
ing magistrates' committals) for I
January
to 31 December 200 I for each
Crown Court. These were
then
scaled in steps of 100 from 1-42, in
which five courts made fewer
than
100 decisions (Point I on
the
scale)
to Point 42 for Manchester (two combined Crown Courts) which made
4,134 decisions. To produce aconsistent, albeit artificial, measure of
the
*School of Law, Cardiff University.
I The database 'casetrack.com' maintained by
the
Royal Courts of Justice franchisee
Smith Bernal Ltd.
257
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