Vocal Voices

New Sentencing Guidelines say that judges should: "consider whether a criminal is from an ethnic, cultural or faith minority, or is female or transgender before issuing a punishment."

No, no they should not! They should consider the crime, its circumstances, and how and why it was carried out. All of the things mentioned above are immaterial.

A burglary is a burglary; a murder is a murder and fraud is fraud. They should all be treated the same regardless of the perpetrator's beliefs, religion or gender.

I quite agree Frank. There have been rumblings and grumblings in the media about a two tier justice system and this can only corroborate the complaints. There was a guest speaker on GB news this morning who put forward the point of view that ethnic minorities and under privileged groups were given harsher sentences than other people. He did not offer any evidence as to why he thought this was and if it could have been those who had been given harsher sentences were re-offenders.

In any case, it should not matter what ethnicity the offenders are. The justice system must be fair to all and seen to be fair to all.

Workingman wrote:New Sentencing Guidelines say that judges should: "consider whether a criminal is from an ethnic, cultural or faith minority, or is female or transgender before issuing a punishment.".

That's just plain wrong!

Welcome to Starmers new world

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The guidelines are from the independent Sentencing Council, not Starmer nor the government.

And Labour's justice secretary, who herself is from an ethnic minority background, says she will review the role and powers of the Sentencing Council and legislate to overrule them if needed.

victor wrote:Welcome to Starmers new world

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The fact that people believe they can say this and not be held to account for it is the problem that needs to be solved.

Sadly I see no way to solve it in the UK.

Yet this was signed off by the Justice ministers official representative in Whitehall.

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I also read that the Justice Minister's representative was at the discussions and raised no objections at the time.

Workingman wrote:The guidelines are from the independent Sentencing Council

I don't think that there is much true inpedendence in British public bodies.