“Differential treatment on the basis of ethnicity or religion is fundamentally at odds with the historical principle of equal treatment before the law,” is the main finding of a new report into the problems posed by recent Sentencing Council guidelines based on a convict’s ethnic, religious or ‘gender’ background.
While fortunately such discrimination was overturned at the 11th hour, the same cannot be said of UK bail conditions. For the report’s author it is “entirely wrong” that the Sentencing Council
an Arm’s Length Body should be able to make such fundamental changes to policy concerning the justice system without the consent of Parliament and over the active opposition of both the Lord Chancellor and her shadow in the Opposition.
The Policy Exchange report, Two-Tier Justice: Political accountability, the Sentencing Council and the limits of judicial independence, can be read here. In trying to restore the authority of the government/elected parliament—by preventing ethnicity, race, religion or membership of a “cultural minority” being a factor in sentencing—it seeks to cut the influence of ‘quangos’ and, perhaps unwittingly, flags up the excessive influence of courts over democratic influences.
