The Sentencing Process

Factors Affecting the Decision:

Circumstances of the offence: objective features:

These are very important. Clearly the nature of the crime and how serious it is will play a large role in informing the final decision on punishment e.g. was the crime of a violent or non-violent nature?

As all crimes are not the same and they have different circumstances, they must be treated individually taking into account the objective features (or circumstances) of the crime. The prosecution uses these objective features throughout the trial and sentencing to stress the seriousness of the crime, and push for a suitable penalty.

These features include:

·      The degree of planning

·      The motive for the crime

·      The use of threat of violence

·      Whether there was aggravating factors

·      Whether the crime is becoming more common in society

·      The pleas that the defendant entered at the start of the trial