Paul Firth: We need the maximum truthfulness about our system of court sentences

However, a moment's reflection on my part, writing as one who has sentenced a good few burglars in his time, leaves me wondering how many citizens were equally surprised at the rare use of maximum sentences for a range of offences. As one who worked inside the criminal justice system for more than 30 years, there was no "revelation" here, merely a statement of the obvious.

Perhaps I might fill in a gap or two. How many people know that the maximum sentence for robbery is life imprisonment? With that knowledge, how many people seriously expect the average mugger, who will be sentenced for the legal offence of robbery, to be given a life sentence?

And how many people can say what the maximum sentence for burglary is? How many could even tell you that it depends on the premises being burgled? Honestly, that's how the 1968 Theft Act was amended in 1991.

The point here is that not all offences are alike, even though they

might be described as "robbery" or as "burglary". Would we not agree that the young man who targets the old person's bungalow for his burglary, all other things being equal, deserves a longer sentence than the opportunist sneak thief who enters a house ready for demolition to steal the copper piping? Yet both are to be sentenced for "burglary".

If one is to receive a greater sentence than the other, then the maximum sentence can be passed only for the very worst case of its type. That is what a maximum must mean. Otherwise all sorts of lesser offenders will receive exactly the same sentence as their more ruthless fellow burglars.

A maximum sentence will almost always be ruled out when the defendant has pleaded guilty, as most do. The courts have always recognised that an early admission to an offence deserves a reduction in sentence. Otherwise every case, no matter how "open and shut", would go to trial on the off chance that the defendant might get lucky.

Being able to tell a victim of crime at an early stage that he or she will not be needed at court can result in a sentence being reduced by anything from 10 per cent to a third, depending on how quickly the defendant admits his guilt.

Mr Davies is also concerned that "incredibly persistent burglars" do not receive the maximum sentence. I am sure he will know that sentences passed on those of previous good character are shorter than those for persistent offenders, especially where the offences are similar in nature. But the most important factor by far is the seriousness of the offence to be sentenced. If that would normally attract a middle-range sentence, no amount of antecedents will take the sentence up to the maximum.

That same set of 2008 sentencing figures does, however, reveal two facts that might go some way toward balancing things out. In the 10 years up to 2008, the percentage of defendants sentenced to immediate custody rose from 6.8 to 7.3 per cent. The average length of a custodial sentence also went up in the same period from 11.8 to 13.3 months.

I still have my own serious concerns that recent sentencing trends have paid insufficient regard to the punishment element in sentencing and that the Ministry of Justice's current review might place undue

emphasis on rehabilitation, not least because of the perceived failure of shorter prison sentences.

When I passed a short sentence, it was meant as a punishment. It was most often to be served by a defendant who had "been through the system", had failed to reform and had failed to respond to community sentences.

Sometimes custody, long or short, is all there is left when everything else has been tried and failed. In those cases, the length of the sentence must reflect the nature of the offence. In law, the maximum sentence for theft, even stealing a few pounds worth of groceries from a shop, is seven years. One must have a sense of proportion.

But my final concern has to be that the ordinary citizen and the MP can be equally shocked or outraged at discovering something so obvious to those who work in and around the courts. There really is a huge

perception gap here and I cannot help thinking that politicians and others have minimal interest in closing that gap and telling the truth,

the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Paul Firth is a retired district judge who sat in magistrates' courts in Yorkshire, Merseyside and Lancashire.