The Scottish Sentencing Council has today published a new research report reviewing the challenges of comparing sentencing across jurisdictions.
The literature review, carried out by a group of expert academics from universities across the UK, explores the challenges in comparing sentencing between Scotland, and England and Wales, as well as exploring the opportunities for evidence-led sentencing practice to learn from comparative studies.
The review finds that despite the relative similarity of the two jurisdictions, to date, there has been little criminal justice research directly comparing Scotland and England and Wales. Without comparative research employing a single methodology common to both jurisdictions, the review finds that policy makers must rely on trying to infer comparisons from individual, ad hoc studies in each of the two jurisdictions. This leads to difficulties in learning from best practice across the different jurisdictions.
You can read the full report here.