Member

Amendment 1 would allow us to stop the Sentencing Council recommending pre-sentence reports for those who simply belong to a demographic group, but not exclude them for those who have other personal characteristics that are clearly more relevant to the sentencing decision and do not, I suggest, give rise in any way to so-called two-tier justice. The Bill will still allow the Sentencing Council to issue guidelines recommending pre-sentence reports to explore the personal circumstances of an offender who is to be sentenced, even though it will prohibit that in relation to the offender’s personal characteristics, so the question arises of whether all the information about an offender that sentencers should properly take into account in sentencing can be justifiably described as the offenders “personal circumstances”.