Structuring Sentencing in Canada, England and Wales: A Tale of Two Jurisdictions

Abstract

Over the last century, all common law countries have experienced a movement away from a highly discretionary sentencing environment to one in which judicial discretion is more constrained. (For general discussion of structured sentencing, see chapter 6 of A. von Hirsch, A. Ashworth and J. V. Roberts (eds), Principled Sentencing: Readings on Theory and Policy (3rd edn, Oxford: Hart, 2009).) Some jurisdictions have transformed their sentencing environments by introducing relatively inflexible and tightly binding guideline schemes. Others have taken a middle ground – creating advisory guidance schemes – while a third category has resisted all attempts to structure judicial discretion. This essay describes and compares the divergent histories of two jurisdictions – Canada, and England and Wales – as they have confronted the challenge of structuring sentencing. Despite similarities in the way that sentencing is approached in the two countries they have taken remarkably divergent paths over the past 25 years – and not in the directions that might have been anticipated back in the mid 1980s. After a promising start in that decade, Canada has rejected the adoption of sentencing guidelines, and elected to retain its traditional, highly discretionary approach to sentencing. In contrast, England and Wales has slowly, but surely, adopted a comprehensive and relatively binding set of guidelines, although this outcome also seemed unlikely in 1988.