Good Work

[tahsina]

Hello Dear You be the JUDGE group

I appreciate the work highly. I am doing my phd in Criminology at the
Kingston University on prison women.
I would like to see some cases with female offenders beside the
existing videos.

I also wanted to make some comments regarding the sentencing the drug
addict people as I dont think it is quite proper to put them in the
prison as the past histories and our criminal justice system must have
already experienced prison is not the right place to put the
vulnerables into a place where they become more vulnerable.

I hope we will think and do more investigation and research on some
better alternatives that give these people some room to breathe and
change their lives.

At the end I would like to thank the team a lot for such a wonderful
work and presentation.

I hope we will get more works like that and if you think I can be of
any help to your team please let me know.

Thanks and Best Wishes

Tahsina.

[Aidan@Justice]

Dear Tahsina,

Thank you for your support. We have had many requests for further
cases and will definitely consider adding some at some point, though
it is unlikely to happen in the very near future.

There are many differing views on how offenders addicted to drugs
should be dealt with. The aim of You be the Judge was precisely to
show that sentencing is not an exact science - but rather a considered
exercise where judges and magistrates need to weigh up a number of
things (the law, sentencing guidelines, the facts of the case, etc.).
The offenders' circumstances are only one of the considerations.

In their sentence the judge or magistrate must, by law, consider the
five purposes of sentencing: the punishment of offenders; crime
reduction; public protection; the rehabilitation of offenders; and
reparation by offenders. We hope the difficulty of sentencing comes
through on You be the Judge.

If you would like to have your say on sentencing policy, the Ministry
of justice are currently running a public consultation on sentencing
and rehabilitation, called ‘Breaking the cycle’. You might be
particularly interested in the proposals detailed in Chapter 2 on the
rehabilitation of offenders addicted to drugs.

And I'd encourage anyone else who would like to take part in the
public debate to respond at: www.justice.gov.uk/sentencing

Aidan@Justice