To what extent should an offenders background be taken into consideration when sentencing?

[Bobbyewingshowerscene]

I have just listened to BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze in which the above question is being interrogated by the panelists.
It’s a good listen (as are all the episodes, each considering a different subject) and I will try to post the link.

In my profession I see more than most, the impact of upbringing - or Lived Experience as we call it now- and understand the correlations between poor parenting, absent fathers, poor socio economic conditions, exclusion from school, material/ emotional needs not being met etc as well
as outright abuse and neglect etc.
For this reason we do already have pre- sentencing reports in some cases for judges to consider when sentencing.

However what worries me is if this argument is taken to its full conclusion and ‘Lived experience’ is seen as a mitigating factor in all cases how would this impact on he following :

Abuse of a child where the perp was abused themselves

Domestic violence against an intimate partner by someone who was systematically exposed to this in their own home growing up.

A rapist/ paedophile who was sexually abused as a child/ teen

A mugger of old ladies who has experienced extreme material deprivation all their life

A persistent stalker who has a learning need and attachment issues.

A house burglar/mugger who is funding a substance use issue due to self-
medicating childhood trauma

I mean apart from obvious way this would fail victims and the public at large in terms of reducing risk of sentences were shorter, what about free will and agency.

Would this not actually conversely suggest that people from a challenging background present more of an innate risk to the general public as are less in control than the general population?

All of the so called ‘nuances’ are basically nonsense excuses to justify the march towards doing away with the entire concept of personal responsibility. Straight out of the Marxist playbook.

It’s always someone else’s fault - parents, neighbours, the dog.

Yes there’s a danger of being too liberal about potential contributing or mitigating factors. How would a person evidence that they were mistreated as a child? Does it have to be backed up by a police/SS history, what if the family hid it well?

I think we run the risk of being accidentally unjust, eg a Black person could be said to carry a history of racist incidents on top of generational trauma while a white person is always assumed to be privileged despite maybe growing up in deprivation where generations have never worked and the family are all alcoholics.

We can go round in circles trying to compare suffering v hardship and give the appearance to the victim that the system is far more interested in the criminal’s wellbeing. These factors can be examined in an academic way but the public need to see reasonable justice being done or there would be a perception that people are getting ‘Mickey Mouse’ sentences.

i don’t know think sentencing should differ greatly - but that background material is supplied to prison and probation staff as a personal history of their inmate to help inform risk assessments and needs.

I don’t think it should be taken into account when sentencing. Many people suffer horrible childhoods and don’t grow up to perteptuate these patterns in behaviour.

i do however feel VERY strongly we should be tackling adverse childhood experiences as a matter of urgency so our next generations won’t have to have quite so much childhood trauma taken into account. This for me is better education, quality early years support, real robust protection for abused women and children. Reproductive education and access to contraception. Support for special needs and disability. Living wages. Initiatives to get children growing up in poverty out of poverty. Non resident parents being held to account more if they don’t provide financially for their children. And better mental health support for children and adults.

Nice try Kier

This is such an interesting question and, related to this, one could ask to what extent an adult should be treated as fully responsible for crimes when he or she has been a victim throughout life. It is highly relevant to women because most women in prison have themselves been victims of abuse.

I don’t know the answer but I believe a judge should be able to consider the full picture, including the nature of the crime and the impact on the victim, should be considered. Judges should have discretion to come up with a just sentence. It is very complicated!

This also demonstrates the importance of investing in early intervention so that disadvantaged children are not trapped in a cycle.

So for me, I think there's two prongs to the criminal system - one is justice ie, holding someone accountable for their actions or behaviours, the other for me is about appropriate intervention to reduce the risk of reoffending.

While I absolutely sympathise with any victim of crime (I've been a victim of a genuinely terrifying crime myself) I think the most important part is the second part because that's what creates a safer society and reduces the risk to both the victim and other people. And that is utterly dependent on understanding WHY someone has done what they've done. So in that respect, to me, the 'right' justice is the one that helps stop the same thing from happening again.

I also think free will is obviously very important, but we also can't pretend that everyone is starting on a level playing field and there are many perpetrators of crime who have done what they've done because they've actually been a victim of crime themselves. A perfect example of this is young people who grow up in care being significantly more likely to be groomed by gangs and exploitated into doing criminal activity that benefits the gang. Its highly targeted and extensive and there's only so much the system can do as it stands to protect vulnerable and traumatised children from falling prey to this. It's possible to be both a criminal and a victim at the same time and I do think it's crucial that's taken into account in sentencing, otherwise you create a system that is so focused on making examples of the people they catch that they miss the instigators, the cycle continues and the reoffending rates remain high. We know statistically that harsh sentencing isn't a good enough deterrent for many types of crimes.

I don't recall Marx wanting to do away with the entire concept of personal responsibility. Where did he write that?

This.

Remember that these lived experiences may also be used to direct the person once inside to appropriate services to try to work through the trauma thus preventing future offending. They do not reduce the sentence of child abusers because they were abused themselves, I asked this at a q&a and was told categorically no, it’s about directing towards therapy or placement in most appropriate facility eg a prison with specific facilities

Also I would say we need to be mindful of discrimination in the justice system and within policing. If certain young people are more likely to be stopped and searched because of appearance/ family reputation- they're more likely to be repeatedly done for offending while others may escape with no record. Is it fair to make examples of those people who have only been caught out due to discrimination and unjust structures? I wouldn't say that's ethical either.

There should be absolutely no argument for sentencing guidelines to recommend lighter sentences for people according to their backgrounds. Judges already have recourse to mitigating factors when deciding on sentences so there is already leeway in the system. Any more than that and you really do have two tier justice.

But there is absolutely a place for prison to be a rehabilitating experience for all people. I agree with PP that personal background information could be used in prisons to evaluate prisoner need.

I don't think it effects sentencing all that much.

Having worked in youth justice there were in my opinion, too many staff who thought a bad background or trauma meant the person shouldn't really be held responsible and it wasn;t 'trauma-informed' to suggest otherwise.

Which has contributed in my opinion, to the horrible rise in serious youth crime and knife crime.

I think the tide is turning now and David Camerons 'hug a hoodie' philosophy has been proven to be an abject failure.

Justice is nuanced and cannot be applied in any real way without circumstance. I think it’s ludicrous to suggest anyone should be sentenced without all circumstances including those you mentioned being considered. Draconian zero tolerance hard line thinking is pathetic.

None really. Life isn't fair and some people are dealt a shitty hand, but that's no excuse not to take personal responsibility for your own decisions. These people aren't stealing bread because they're starving. Most of us can provide a bleeding heart sob story, but most don't go around committing crime. I'm aware that prisoners often need therapy, but people on the outside can't access therapy either so?......

I think it would be better for everyone (victims and offenders) to put effort into mitigating the circumstances before, rather than reducing the sentence afterwards.
For example, people who were in care as children are considerably overrepresented in prison. I think it would be better to look into why and put much more resources into supporting children in care (and those aging out of care). But, let’s be honest, more resources for those children/young adults isn’t going to happen.

There’s also too many nuances to give a blanket answer. Your OP talks about someone who was sexually abused as a child - well if they are now 50 and sexually abuse a child, no, I wouldn’t consider that to be mitigation. If they are 13 and still being abused themselves, I’d consider that to be quite a different situation in terms of the best way to deal with it, despite them being over the age of criminal responsibility (although of course still horrific for the victim).

You also give the example of someone with learning difficulties. I would think that that should always be considered when sentencing.

I don’t think OP was saying that they do reduce sentences in those cases. She was presenting it as an hypothetical example for her question of how far do you take circumstances into account. I think

On the road currently will read thread on break later.
x

Sentencing shouldn’t be impacted by circumstances - however support should be offered (in addition, not instead!) : therapy, help to get qualifications, help to geographically move away from a bad influence, etc.

Sentencing should always reflect the harm done - if I’m robbed or abused, the damage to me (and society as a whole) is the same regardless of the perpetrator’s background.

It makes sense in theory, because in theory, criminal punishment is about rehabilitation. The way criminals should be rehabilitated will depend on their individual motivations for commiting crime and barriers to being a productive and/or harmless citizen, so you'd need a pre-sentencing report to determine how, where and for how long a sentence should take place.

But then you'd also have several settings where different types of rehabilitation could occur with different levels of restriction for the people sentenced there.

Not entirely. It's also about punishment and protection of the public.

If protecting the public was the primary motivation, only violent offenders would be jailed.

If you give lighter sentences as a result of organisations like social services not acting sooner then you are not going to raise people who have been damaged by say abuse to the level of society.

We will have a justice system where caring families lie that they abused their children to get them lighter sentences.

I know that people in prison are more likely to be abused etc but that’s the responsibility of social services and police to protect the kids before they are criminals. We have a system where those groups have a lack of resources so overlook what appears minor but acting when things aren’t serious is surely where you have a chance of changing things ?

His name is Keir.

And that's ridiculous.

Good post.

I can give an example.

I was hit by someone who was high on drugs and a repeat offender. Each time he got caught he just got a sentence for that incident which was very lenient. In my case it was one years driving ban. No previous arrests and charges taken into consideration.

So, he’s already done this multiple times. It’s only a matter of time before he kills someone. So, with that in mind do you not think a judge should say “you haven’t learnt your lesson, you are reckless, and dangerous. You’ve done this 3 times and you are now going to jail”.