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The Sentencing Council for England and Wales has introduced “two-tier” guidelines for judges, instructing them to grant favorable treatment to “female” defendants and anyone “from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community”—that is, virtually anyone who is not a white, male Christian. The guidance, effective from April, specifies that courts should typically require a pre-sentence report before sentencing women, individuals from ethnic, cultural, or faith minorities, as well as other groups, such as young adults aged 18 to 25, people claiming to be transgender, and the disabled.
The Sentencing Council, sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, emphasized the “critical role” of pre-sentence reports in determining whether or not a defendant should be imprisoned. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, of the notionally right-wing Conservative Party, challenged the policy in Parliament, stating, “The new sentencing guidelines… will make a custodial sentence less likely for those ‘from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community.’ Why is the Justice Secretary enshrining this double standard, this two-tier approach to sentencing? It is an inversion of the rule of law. Conservative