Our volume now moves away from the theory and practice of mitigation and aggravation at sentencing to consider the views of the community. The next chapter, by Austin Lovegrove, reports findings from a project involving members of the public and judges in Australia. In this chapter we draw on a number of large-scale quantitative surveys to explore public attitudes to the factors that aggravate or mitigate sentence. The purpose of this essay is to describe recent research findings which illuminate public attitudes to a number of common sentencing factors. These results challenge the view that the public are inflexible, punitive sentencers with little interest in mitigation, and shed light on the model of sentencing to which many people subscribe.

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

The chapter begins by discussing some recent survey trends with respect to public attitudes to sentencing. We then discuss some reasons why we might want to know about attitudes to mitigation and aggravation. Some methodological caveats are issued; different approaches to measuring public attitudes will yield very different responses. This discussion is followed by a presentation of some specific research findings from a study involving a large, representative sample of the public in England and Wales. Finally, we draw some conclusions for the sentencing process.