Sentencing: A Social Process

How should we understand sentencing decision-making? Despite huge efforts world-wide to critique, measure, and reform sentencing, why does it remain an enigma? This book argues that sentencing is an enigma because academic and policy thinking about sentencing is dominated by a set of taken-for-granted assumptions rooted in a paradigm which presumes autonomous individualism. Sentencing as a Social Process proposes a distinctive approach. Understanding sentencing as a socially-generated process allows us to rethink seemingly obvious binary categories, including: rules versus discretion; aggravating versus mitigating factors; and offence versus offender. Tata unearths the implications for classic policy conundrums, including: judicial independence and accountability; consistency and individualisation; the efficiency and quality of justice; and technology and judging. Scholars and students across a range of disciplines including criminology, criminal justice, socio-legal studies, decision-making and law will find this book stimulating and provocative.