Victims deserve more support but shouldn’t decide policy
Imagine a world in which convicted offenders could decide their own sentences. It’s obvious that many who have committed terrible crimes would get off too lightly.
Equally, if victims could decide sentences we’d end up with many situations where offenders would get unjustly harsh punishment.
This is why in an adversarial court system we have a judge who is emotionally detached and can make an objective judgment. Usually, this judgement is somewhere in the middle of what either side would have wished for.
And usually, it is morally justifiable and reasonably just; which is why our justice system maintains its credibility and keeps functioning.
It is equally important to separate individual cases from sentencing laws that affect all cases. This is why sentencing guidelines exist. Each case is different, and taking all factors into account, a murder in one case might warrant a sentence of 15 years, in another one of 25 years.
What’s important to remember that changes to sentencing law will affect all cases, even if judges are able to make individual decisions.
For example, if the maximum sentence for armed robbery is increased from 8 to 16 years, all sentences across the board will become longer, as the frame of reference has changed.
At the lower end, someone who would have previously received a sentence of 2 years will now receive one of around 4 years.
From individual cases to laws for all
What we see often is that politicians allow these two lines of separation (objectivity in individual cases and separation between individual cases and laws affecting all cases) to break down.
Victims, who are dissatisfied with the outcome in an individual case and regard the sentencing laws as too lenient, will often campaign and lobby politicians to change those laws. And often, politicians will listen to their concern and propose new legislation in parliament.
Whilst this can correct injustices, it can also have unintended consequences and create laws for all that are less fair.
An example: The difference between murder and manslaughter
There is an important moral difference between murder and manslaughter that everyone understands.
In a famous case from 2011 (which led to a book and also a play), Jacob Dunne became involved in a group fight and killed a person with one single punch.
Whilst by today’s standards his sentence seems lenient, nobody would argue that he should have been convicted of murder and receive a life sentence. It is clear that he did not intend to kill.
Two recent laws arising from victims’ campaigns, however, have muddled the distinction between murder and manslaughter.
Harper’s Law states that any manslaughter of a serving emergency worker in action is given an automatic life sentence and is thereby in effect treated as murder. Death resulting from a push leading to an accidental fall will be treated the same as a shot in the head.
Violet Grace’s Law increased the maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving from 14 years to life in prison. Whilst there are minimum sentences for murder, this still means that someone causing an accident due to speeding, dangerous driving or intoxication will receive a sentence very similar to someone who deliberately drives a car into a group of people with the intention of killing.
Deterrence and the diminishing returns of tougher sentencing
In another victims’ campaign of 2010 the minimum sentence for murder in which a knife or weapon was involved was increased to 25 years.
Another law of 2026 aligned the minimum sentence for domestic murder with a weapon to that law by equally increasing it to 25 years.
The rationale for making sentences harsher is that they will function as a deterrent and prevent future victims. The thinking goes: “Offenders will think twice before committing the crime.”
This rationale is flawed for various reasons.
First of all, most of the time offenders don’t even know what the sentence for their crime is. Most offences arise not from a deliberate calculation but in the ‘heat of the moment’.
Take the example of Jacob Dunne for example. If the sentence for manslaughter would have been life in prison he would have still committed the crime.
Or imagine a domestic abuser – will he stop beating his wife, thinking: “The sentence has just increased, I’d better stop.”
Even for calculated crime, increasing sentences will have little effect. Imagine a bank robber saying: “They’ve just increased the sentence, we better stop.”
There is overwhelming evidence that unduly harsh sentences do not work as a deterrent and that whilst there is an initial deterrence for punishing behaviours, the deterrent effect won’t increase as the punishment increases.
Three-strike laws and the joint enterprise felony murder rule in the US, for example, have been shown to have had no effect on crime rates, yet have caused enormous damage and many grave injustices by locking up people for life who have either committed relative minor crimes or were innocent.
A much more effective way to reduce offending is catching more criminals.
If bank robbers know they will get caught, they are much less likely to commit the crime.
It would be much more effective and better for society if all rapists were caught and given a comparatively lenient sentence, than the current situation, where less than 1% are caught but receive the most severe sentence.
And there is another severe downside to deterrence:
That it absolves responsibility from tackling societal issues that cause crime.
We will not solve knife crime by making sentencing harsher, but by solving the underlying societal issues. We can clearly trace an increase in knife crime to the closure of youth centres, for example. Building more youth centres would therefore be much more effective in addressing knife crime than increasing sentences.
Deterrence tells us we don’t have to worry about society – it’s all about the individual – and it’s an easy way for politicians to appear as if they are doing things to address crime when really they are not.
Sentence inflation
The cumulative effect of victims’ campaigns has been sentence inflation: More people are being sent to prison for longer.
Sentence inflation, together with a lack of funding since 2010, is the cause of the current prison crisis. Quite simply, sentences have become too long across the board and prisons are so overcrowded that no rehabilitation can take place.
But it is vitally important to emphasise that it is not victims who are to blame, but politicians who fail to see wider consequences and shy away from explaining complex realities.
A victim might well be right that the outcome in their particular case was unjust from their point of view, but that does not necessarily mean the law should be changed for all. Increasing the length of sentences does not address crime, yet it has led to the prison crisis where too many are in prison for too long.
The core issue: Victims are let down by a system which only offers retribution but not the support they need
The fundamental issue is that our system lets victims down at every step.
It starts with the dishonesty of sentencing. An offender receives a sentence and then victims have to find out that they will only have to spend a fraction of that in prison.
With the early release scheme they now cannot even be sure of that. This creates distress and anxiety.
Being victim of a crime can be a life-shattering event, causing trauma that may never fully heal.
And the only thing that our system offers victims to deal with that trauma is retribution.
The problem is that retribution doesn’t provide healing, it doesn’t provide closure and the ability to move forward; it provides nothing but more anger and hatred, it is never satisfied. You can never punish enough.
Equally, for offenders, under the current system they have to take no responsibility for their actions whatsoever. All they have to do is sit their time, without being confronted with their actions and having to acknowledge them.
A better system for victims and offenders
A much better system would provide victims with the right professional support from the very beginning. Every victim of a severe crime would be immediately assigned professional psychological help to deal with the trauma.
Restorative justice, rather than a tiny sideshow at the moment, would be at the centre of every case. We know that these programs work, and that they often have better outcomes for victims.
Victims who seek answers would be able to at least ask them. And offenders would have to face the reality of their action, which can be a lot harder than to just sit the time.
Rather than be purely adversarial from the start, it would be a system focused on responsibility, answers, healing, coming together and moving forward.