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?

I didn't say it was the primary motivation, just that it plays a part.

And public protection doesn;t apply to only violent offenders, it also applies to non-contact sexual offenders, drug dealers, prolific shoplifters, fraud, scammers, and on and on.

It's a really interesting topic. We know that life experiences, especially in childhood, make affect the likelihood of someone committing crimes.

But that doesn't change anything for the victims of crime, or for the risk someone poses to the public.

My view is that pre sentencing reports shouldn't routinely be used to reduce sentences (though in some circumstances it might appropriate if counselling or courses recommended). But that they should generally be used to provide instructions for extra support in prison to help prevent reoffending.

So, if someone is sentenced for domestic violence offences and it comes to light that they experienced/were exposed to domestic violence as a child, their sentence should include counselling and workshops to help them process this and understand healthy relationships going forward.

I'm not from the UK, and in my country you volunteer - and get elected by our national body of jurisdiction and courthouses - to become a juror. I have been a juror for about 7 years now, and in my experience people's background are considered to some extend - and, to some extend, impact their sentence. But, it very much, if not entirely, depends on the severity of the crime, past patterns, and where in life they are in the present. I recently sat a case where two young men, friends, had committed the same crimes together - one of them got off fairly lightly while the other did not. Same crimes, different sentences. Primarily because the first-mentioned man didn't have too much on his criminal record already, and because he had demonstrated succesfully that he had been in a good place in his life for a very extended period (years): he was in school, had a stable job, had cut off his toxic social circle, stopped doing drugs, etc.

The other young man, on the other hand, had a much longer sheet of offences behind him, showed no sign of remorse, and also did not demonstrate to the judge and jury that he had made any attempts at changing his life around for the better since being arrested. Nor did his past patterns indicate that he's likely to - on the contrary. So yeah, he got a prison sentence and a huge fine.

This.

I also sat a very long rape case where the perpetrator only had minor offences on his record already, but because of the brutality of his crimes against several women, and all the evidence stacked up against him, he got the most severe punishment, without consideration for his childhood, background, otherwise okay criminal record and the fact he was in a good place in life with his own business and home.

The judge can attach orders to a sentence, particularly community sentences such as alcohol reduction services, mental health interventions and drug counselling.

Once people enter prison, their offender managers or probation officers in prison (for high risk offenders) do take into account the different aspects of their life that may have contributed to their offending and incorporate it as much as possible into their sentence plan. So this is already being done.

However, it is much more effective in the female estate than the male estate which is seriously overstretched and funding for partner services have been cut.

This is something I’ve always wondered as it’s the explanation I agree with.

offenders need to be made accountable for their actions absolutely, but I do also believe that nobody who is ‘typical’ (I don’t want to use the word normal) would ever have the capacity to kill / rape / assault. People generally know right from wrong. So something’s gone wrong in someone’s brain to have the urge and will to do that. On that basis I do think that whatever specific therapies are appropriate to their time in prison or another closed facility.

I have seen a C4 programme though (I think it was called the jury) to see if two different juries would reach the same verdict in which the guy had murdered his wife but he wanted to bring sentence down to manslaughter arguing that her abuse towards him made him snap. It was interesting.

I think once you reach adulthood, you need to be held fully responsible for your actions, however bad your background or upbringing has been. Only exception should be mental capacity.

People know the basics of what is right or wrong, whatever their circumstances.

Related to this- are some people just more inclined to be evil, and then having a difficult upbringing is more like to bring out their criminality? I have personal experience of this- some trauma in my upbringing, my sibling also had trauma. I live a law abiding life and have moved on from this trauma. My sibling is an abusive and violent person whi enjoys power and control over others. My sibling blames our upbringing for much of this behaviour. I think there is something evil that was triggered in my sibling and would not want current abusive behaviour to be explained away by past trauma. Based on this scenario I would want the full force of the law to be applied.

There have been some studies on serial killers (appreciate this is a tad different to your scenario) but they did neurological tests that found a commonality. The receptors responsible for empathy didn’t function the same way that they do in neurotypical humans and some even claim that these could have been ‘turned off’ as a result of long term childhood abuse. I am not a scientist though,
so cannot be quoted here!

It is an estimated that 50-60% of prisoners in the UK are functionally illiterate. Therefore poor education resulting from poor parenting must be a factor.

I see your point.

But "something being wrong is someones brain" is a completely subjective opinion. And often has nothing to do with any diagnosable condition.

Everyone has their own opinions on morality and crime. Crime IS a social construct.

You'll see numerous threads on MN even where violence is considered a completely valid response to certain situations. Same with murder. There are millions of people in the world who think murder is entirely justified in certain situations.

As for rape, the statistics demonstrate that many people have different definitions of rape that don;t always correlate with how it's seen in law.

Fraud, burglary thieving, etc are non violent crimes and the public absolutely do need to be protected from those who commit these crimes.
And imprisonment is often the punishment given for these types of crimes when their perpetrators did not learn from prior non incarceration punishment.
Thus proving themselves a menace to a society which suffers the after affects of such criminality.
Increased prices in shops due to the need for more security and fraud prevention systems, increased insurance in places of high criminality, another knock on effect being the poorer who usually live in these areas in high numbers find it increasingly harder to afford goods and insurance for the little that they can buy.

There are numerous studies correlating many, many things when it comes to prison populations. And different studies may say different things.

Correlation doesn't mean causation.

The number of tobacco smokers for instance in UK prisons is about 4 times higher than the national average. We don;t think smoking causes crime.

There are potentially dozens of factors and you can;t target all of them. It's usually a combination of many factors in each individual.

And those combinations of factors are also seen in the general population who are not offenders.

Totally, but blue sky thinking - if we had all the available money and resources in the world it would be great to then try and diagnose those people during their sentence. If nothing found - ok bad apple. If you start drawing up correlations, then you can apply this to therapy whilst incarcerated to limit the risk of reoffending when released, and even further - to spot signs in younger life to avoid these traits turning in to offences.

I watched Parole on BBC a while ago and it was so interesting, they were dealing with mostly complex cases with serial repeat offenders, some of whom committed multiple serious crimes including murder. What struck me was you sort of knew who was going to get parole and who wasn’t not so much based on the nature of the crime, but really how they came across and how they were reported to be by prison staff. Some were clearly only going to re-offend, others had a chance of not. Most came from awful backgrounds full of neglect and violence. Some were clearly psychopaths incapable of change. Others were clearly remorseful and wanting to live a better life.

@ForTaupeBiscuit I watched it too! Appreciate this is totally derailing the thread, But what I found mostly fascinating was that nearly all of them had ended up breaching their conditions and ultimately returning to prison. A lot of it did have to do with the environment they were released into - The conditions would be that they stay in the shelter (Can’t remember the specific name). But when the offender clearly tells you that drink and drugs make them offend, it’s unreasonable to then release them To a place they share with other alcoholics and drug users and then expect them to be on the straight and narrow and avoid temptation IMO

The one that made me lose my everloving shit was when a judge stated that an offender (it was multiple armed robbery) would be adversely affected if convicted because he came from a good background. . .

Honestly lived experience may be relevant to why an offender offends but it is rarely a basis for mitigation.

Being on drugs or being drunk gets you a longer sentence.

Abused as a child and then commit a similar offence? IMO makes no difference to the harm inflicted on a victim.

Lived experience does not usually affect someone’s understanding of right and wrong. Crime is an active choice, not an accident. Sentencing should focus on the harm inflicted or intended on victims. The background of the offender is far less important.

I don’t really think it should be taken into account at all, because surely no one who has done any of the things you’ve named would have no history of adverse life experiences. None of us live in a bubble. Even the most functioning successful person will have some history of trauma or difficulty in life. I say this as a red flag waving lifelong Labour supporter. It doesn’t change the risk someone poses to society, if anything it likely exacerbates it.

Where such things are often accounted for in sentencing is when someone has done something “good” in the past or made a positive contribution to society. For example, I have a family member who was convicted and went to prison for sexually abusing his niece. Part of the sentencing involved the consideration that he had until then (50s), been an upstanding citizen with no prior convictions, was employed, and had been helping the niece’s family practically and financially during the time he was abusing her. Now me personally, I’d probably call some of that grooming 🤔 but apparently, it worked in his favour in sentencing.

Also, speaking as a sociologist, the use of the term “lived experience” isn’t really correct as it’s being used here. It’s probably more accurate to say life experiences or if we’re talking specifically about childhood, we might say adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

Lived experience means more specifically having a life experience that informs your perspective on an issue. So like if you want to develop a policy on wheelchair use on the tube, you’d talk to engineers and tube drivers and tube users, including those who have lived experience of using a wheelchair. It’s similar, but a subtle difference. It would lead me to believe that whoever was speaking was either quite junior or didn’t really know what they were talking about and was trying to use a big term to sound smart instead of using the normal words all of us would use to talk about these things. Okay, I’m going to get off my soap box now. 😂

I have been reading a book by Dr Duncan Harding called the Criminal Mind. He is a forensic psychiatrist mainly working with children and the book is absolutely fascinating. I will say as you might expect the book answers the question of involving kids in the criminal justice system with the level of nuance you might expect.

He is a big proponent of the criminal justice system being of particular importance to children who are exhibiting extreme violence instead of giving them endless chances to rehabilitate or excusing behaviours with trauma or no very hard evidence of a mental health condition because he thinks it gives the best chance for them to change.

the hostels they were placed into sounded like open prisons really, so it was unreasonable to expect them not to reoffend. I’ll never forget the younger woman, she was like a 16 year old in a 30 year old body. She had to state that she knew she could get anxious going to shops and crossing the road…imagine your life just being halted and being placed into an alternate reality for years and years and then being expended to carry on and adjust to life outside. I wonder what she’s doing now.

I think the key is hierarchy of objectives. Top needs to be public safety. That means certain criminal actions, regardless of reason, need to trigger the perpetrator to be kept away from the public. Exactly what then happens with them could well be dictated by the reasons behind their crime, their own difficult background etc. But what you can't do is prioritise something like leveling the playing field so that difficult background equals more forgiveness, as that exposes the public to more risk and opens up a huge mess of chaos.

No, totally agree with that. Rehabilitation is an important element in managing offenders but really, you cannot sentence less to deal with the difficulties in someone’s background. The chances are that it makes less responsible or more dangerous in some cases. It’s very tough, but by the time you are facing custody, you can’t really say your background is significant and means you get a lesser sentence. The reality is you’ve done something to harm someone.

Not at all.