THE Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, has accused the Government of using the Sentencing Council guidelines “to feed a culture war”. Speaking within the House of Lords last week throughout the Second Reading of the Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill debate, she described the move as “distressing”.
The Bill seeks to remove pre-sentencing reports “for certain offenders, including those from an ethnic, cultural, or faith minority”, the Prisons Minister, Lord Timpson, said. The reports are utilized by judges to contemplate the sentence that they hand down, be it community or custodial, and “could have led to offenders receiving differential treatment by way of access to pre-sentence reports based on their faith or the color of their skin”.
Bishop Treweek, the lead bishop for prisons, said: “I don’t consider this can be a debate we should always be having in any respect. I don’t consider this slightly theatrical laws is mandatory.
“At the guts of the Christian gospel is a God who holds together each justice and mercy. We need an enormous long-term vision . . . about transforming lives and communities, and that features victims in addition to offenders, recognising that many offenders are also victims . . . We have to take account of the impact of sentencing on families and the broader community. I’m not saying that folks who commit crimes shouldn’t receive punishment, but I’m saying that sentencing ought to be far more than this and provides the very best possible outcomes for society.
“The Justice Secretary says that inequality in society is a matter for policy and never for the judiciary,” she concluded. “How, then, will the Government create an equal society over their term of office in order that these guidelines turn out to be redundant?”
Several peers were unsure concerning the implications, fearing government interference within the judiciary’s responsibility for sentencing under the guise of policy. Giving her maiden speech, Baroness Nichols (Labour) deemed that reports “ought to be available for all offenders and that access to a pre-sentence report shouldn’t be determined by ethnicity, culture, or faith”.
The former Archbishop of York Lord Sentamu (Crossbench) welcomed the Bill but said that the Government “must have been much wiser to select those characteristics which might be prohibited for use as a basis for exclusion from the Human Rights Act”. As it was, the draft laws didn’t acknowledge how “religion and belief are protected characteristics. Why not put in those protected characteristics?”
He was also concerned about references to “cultural background” and “race” as terms. “I used to be chair of the General Synod’s Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns, which got here out of the Faith within the City report. We carried out a survey of the ways of combating racism within the dioceses of the Church of England in 1991, and we called it Seeds of Hope . . . men and ladies, girls and boys, of each hue and ethnic group belong to the one race, the human race, all made within the image of God, and all are of unique price in his sight.”
He desired to “bury the word ‘racism’ . . . it often doesn’t describe what you would like to describe”.
Baroness Hamwee (Liberal Democrats) said: “There is a risk of confusing characteristics under this Bill with protected characteristics defined for a unique piece of laws.” For Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (Crossbench), “the term ‘personal characteristics’ without definition, is confusing”, particularly within the Explanatory Notes, which “uses the term ‘particular circumstances’ of people in apparent contradiction to ‘personal characteristics’. I’m undecided that I understand the difference.”
Lord Marks didn’t consider “that the Sentencing Council has produced guidelines that depart from the principle that everyone seems to be equal before the law. We on this House all consider in equality before the law.”
Summing up, Lord Timpson said: “This is a targeted and specific Bill which serves to guard the necessary principles of equality before the law.”
The Bill now returns to the Lords for the Committee Stage, from 19 May.
