Essay On Adult Sentencing

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When sentencing someone the Criminal Justice Act 2003 sets out the aims of sentencing for adult offenders. It focus’ on the punishment of the offenders, the reduction of crime (which includes reduction by deterrence), the reform and rehabilitation of offenders, protection of the public and the making of reparation by offenders to persons affected by their offences.
Retribution means the offender is punished in respect to what they deserved. It is looked at in correlation to the crime they committed. Retribution does not try to change behaviour.
Deterrence can be separated into two categories: individual deterrence and general deterrence. Individual deterrence attempts to prevent the offender from offending again through the fear of further punishment. General deterrence attempts to stop potential offenders from committing a crime.
Rehabilitation is used to help offenders back …show more content…

When an offender has previous convictions that are of a similar nature of the most recent committed crime then this can increase the sentence. If the offender was on bail whilst committing the crime, then this is also an aggravating factor. Furthermore, any animosity that is displayed in a racial or religious context, or animosity to disability or sexual orientation being involved within the crime that has been committed can all be aggravating factors. Furthermore, the court will want to know for example, in the case of theft, is the value of the goods that have been stolen and if the person that committed the crime was in a position of trust.
A mitigating factor that can reduce the sentence is a guilty plea. The sliding scale is used to indicate how much of a reduction is allowed at different stages in the proceedings. The longer it takes for an offender to plead guilty the smaller the percentage of reduction becomes.
Another factor is if there are no previous convictions then there may be a small

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