Public should not feel young offenders get off: Faculty
A proposed guideline on sentencing young people, with rehabilitation at its heart, has been strongly supported by the Faculty of Advocates, though with a warning to avoid the public will need reassurance that offenders will not go scot-free.
Responding to the Scottish Sentencing Council's consultation on its draft guideline for sentencing under-25s, Faculty agrees that rehabilitation should be the core consideration.
However, while it agrees that a principle-based approach is preferable to an offence-specific approach, Faculty believes it should be emphasised that all sentencing considerations remain relevant for the most serious offences. These are set out in the earlier guideline, "Principles and Purposes of Sentencing", which describes protection of the public and punishment, as well as rehabilitation, as the main purposes a sentence should try to achieve.
It calls for the under-25s guideline "to make it more clear than it presently does that this draft guideline, which on the face of it is essentially wholly mitigatory, has to be seen in a broader context".
Faculty adds: "A broader context, specifically a stronger link to or integration with the 'Principles and Purposes of Sentencing' guideline, would allow the public to understand that this is not a guideline which aims to have young people 'get off scot-free'."
A more obvious and easily understood integration between the two documents, it says, would allow the courts, practitioners, and the general public to more readily understand how the different sentencing guidelines fit together and which, if either, takes precedence over the other where they may, on one reading, appear to be in conflict.
Commenting on the cut-off age of 25, which is consistent with the commissioned research, Faculty states: "We consider that the most important outcome from this proposed guideline is that the individual court retains the overall flexibility to deal with the particular offender before it appropriately and to take account, as best it can, of the level of maturity of that offender… The significant factor would appear to be the maturity of the individual and the consequent capacity for change of that individual, rather than necessarily the age of the individual."
As respects the emphasis on rehabilitation, Faculty is "pleased to note that the majority of the public surveyed in the cited research also consider that, for young offenders, rehabilitation is the most important sentencing consideration. It would appear, therefore, that public perception and our own thoughts on the matter align".