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Contrasting JudgementsBY WILFRED HYDE‘Contrasting Judgements’ contains a report on two sentencing seminars held by a project knownas ‘International Comparisons in Criminal Justice’ (ICCJ).ICCJ seminars are small, informal gatherings.They do not produce communiques or strivefor agreed answers to the problems beingdiscussed. What they do provide is anopportunity for judges from different countries todiscuss the way in which they approach theirjobs and in particular the task of passingsentence on those who appear before them.Judges from Canada and the USA have attendedsome seminars, but most of the participants havebeen judges from England and Wales, and judgesor public prosecutors from other Europeancountries, including Scotland: a country whosecriminal justice system differs in many respectsfrom that south of the border.The seminars discuss sentencing of convictedoffenders on the basis of actual cases that havecome before the courts. Much of the interest in‘Contrasting Judgements’ lies in the summaries itcontains of more than a dozen cases and of therange of possible sentences which judges indifferent countries thought they themselvesmight have passed. Beyond that what generallessons do the reports contain?First, and not surprisingly, courts in all countriesdeal with a similar range of offences and thoseconvicted of them have to be sentenced. Arson,burglary, sexual assault of children, to choose butthree cases from those in the reports, can and dotake place in all countries, even though the legaldefinitions of the offences may vary.Second, and perhaps more surprisingly, thedifferences between the legal systems in differentcountries - the inquisitorial or accusatorialsystem, the differing part played by the publicprosecutor in different countries, and so forth -do not alter the factors that most judges have inmind when deciding on an appropriate sentence.Discussions at the seminars left no doubt thatthere was a common recognition of the need tobalance the familiar objectives of sentencing:deterrence, the protection of the public and thepunishment and/or treatment of the offender. Itdid not, of course, follow that judges in differentcountries always placed the same weight onthese objectives, but the arguments on how thebalance was best struck were familiar to all.Third, where judges felt an offence was notsufficiently serious to require a custodialsentence, the types of non-custodial sentenceavailable to them were similar in differentcountries. All used fines, probation orsupervision in some form, and communityservice orders. There were, however,interesting differences. Most countries incontinental Europe make more use ofsuspended sentences than is now permitted inthis country. Sweden is already making regularuse of electronic tagging while other countriesare only starting experiments.And what about the differences between thesentencing practices of different countries, and,crucially, the length of prison sentences? Whatseems a long sentence to a judge in one country,such as Denmark, would seem a short sentenceto an American judge. Here the author of‘Contrasting Judgements’ chooses his wordscarefully, and with due caveats about the dangerof not comparing like with like. In a summary ofthe outcome of the second seminar he says‘Swedish participants and those from theNetherlands seemed the readiest to suggest noncustodialpenalties, and when a custodialsentence was suggested the lengths of sentenceproposed by participants from Britain were onthe whole longer than those suggested by theircontinental colleagues’. But, as the reports showthere are gradations and variations, and it is thesewhich make the seminars so interesting, and wehope valuable.And to add a personal note, how shaming it isfor those of us who struggle with any foreignlanguage to listen to people from 10 differentEuropean countries discussing difficult legal andphilosophical issues in fluent English. ‘Contrasting Judgements: Report on TwoInternational Sentencing Seminars’ is available fromNACRO. Price £2.50 including postage.NACRO’s Vice President, JudgeChristopher Pitchers, chairingthe latest ICCJ seminar inLund, Sweden.WILFRED HYDEIS A NACROCONSULTANTPhoto: Rob Allen27 FEBRUARY 1999 SAFER SOCIETY MAGAZINE NACRO