When the Supreme Court struck down mandatory sentencing guidelines in 2005, added Wisenberg, it granted judges a great deal of discretion in issuing sentences.
The Daily Telegraph's legal affairs editor Joshua Rozenberg said Lord Phillips' remarks reflected a general mood among the judiciary that mandatory sentencing had tied their hands.
On mandatory sentencing, I live in Western Australia where we were so fed up with the level of crime and the pathetic sentences handed out that a regulation requiring a prison sentence for a third instance of breaking and entering was forced on parliament.
On Tuesday, Mr Clarke told MPs mandatory sentencing was "rather an American thing" and to have a situation in which, for example, a 13 was automatically imprisoned without a judge being able to use his discretion would "rather go against how we normally approach the sentencing of juveniles".
At Bloomberg's urging in 2007, the state passed mandatory minimum sentencing laws for gun convictions.
Under a controversial points system used in mandatory federal sentencing guidelines, this loss translated into a jail term of between 292 and 365 months.
Increasing the maximum penalties might be attractive to the same crowd who thought that ever increasing prison terms under effectively mandatory criminal sentencing guidelines was good policy, but experience, and the Supreme Court, taught us otherwise.
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Justice campaigners said they were concerned about the proposals, revealed a day after Mr Clarke told MPs that judges should have discretion over sentencing and said mandatory sentences were not the British way.
This syllogism gave America Prohibition, mandatory-minimum sentences, the sentencing disparity between convictions for crack and powder cocaine, and that great guarantee of everyone's security, shoe removal at airports.
Sentencing guidelines directed the judge to impose a mandatory life sentence, but Mr Chambers appealed for a lighter term.
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill introduces a new mandatory custodial term for 16 and 17-year-olds who threaten with a knife.
BBC: Peer warns against knife-crime sentencing for under-18s
The Homicide Review Advisory Group said a so-called mercy killing attracted the same mandatory life penalty as serial killings and it said it wanted sentencing for murder to be discretionary.
Earlier the Homicide Review Advisory Group said a so-called mercy killing attracted the same mandatory life penalty as serial killings and it said it wanted sentencing for murder to be discretionary.
Lord Justice Clerk Lord Carloway remanded Olej in custody and deferred sentencing until next month, where he will impose a mandatory life term and set the length of time to be served.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission has been pushing Congress for more than a decade to change the law that created mandatory minimum sentences for crack cocaine.
The UUP's Ross Hussey was concerned about the challenge to the independence of the judiciary represented by mandatory sentences, whilst Alban Maginness of the SDLP said he did not believe this was a good way of approaching sentencing.
BBC: Sentencing for crimes against older and vulnerable people
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