"Our justice system must be accountable to the public it serves lest it risks undermining the fight against crime"

Telegraph: 4th April 2024: Esther McVey explains her concerns about new sentancing guidelines. 

"I was brought up to believe in maxims such as “if you commit a crime, you do the time” and “Everyone is equal before the law”. Not any more, it appears, after the Sentencing Council for England and Wales decided, against the better advice of the Justice Secretary and much of the judiciary, to change guidelines to potentially give a “get out of jail” card to whole sections of society.

Yesterday this paper reported that new guidelines had come into effect, telling judges and magistrates they must consider “difficult and/or deprived background or personal circumstance” when sentencing criminals. In other words, give more lenient sentences for criminals from poorer backgrounds...

As the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Alex Chalk – like me, a minister accountable to the public – said to the council in his response to their consultation; these guidelines are at best “patronising”. At worst, they could create a two-tier justice system, where entirely subjective judgements like a person’s upbringing, education and “negative experiences of authority” determine the severity of their sentences...

... – how patronising it is to hard-working families on lower incomes to suppose that their children are more likely to become criminals. And how dangerous it is to turn our judges into social analysts or psychiatrists, to have them examine someone’s entire life before passing a sentence... I urge the council to reconsider. Our justice system must be accountable to the public it serves. As elected ministers we are accountable and we are saying that these guidelines risk undermining justice and the fight against crime..."

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