As its title reflects, the recent White Paper A Smarter Approach to Sentencing (Ministry of Justice, 2020) emphasises the role of sentencing in delivering an effective criminal justice system. It hopefully moves probation away from the highly marketised model of delivery that has been so damaging in recent years, but its rehabilitative intentions are largely subsumed within a set of populist and punitive measures. While the paper is critical of the administration of community and custodial sentences which it states has ‘evolved in a piecemeal fashion’ (p. 5) and calls for an improved framework for the resettlement of released prisoners, there is scant acknowledgement of how the Government’s recent reforms have contributed to, and indeed intensified, these policy failings.

中文翻译：

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社论

正如其标题所反映的那样，最近的白皮书《一种更明智的量刑方法》（司法部，2020年）强调了量刑在提供有效的刑事司法系统中的作用。希望它能将缓刑从近年来如此严重破坏的高度市场化的交付模式中移开，但其恢复性意图在很大程度上归功于一系列民粹主义和惩罚性措施。尽管该文件批评了社区和羁押性刑罚的管理，该文件称其已“逐步发展”（第5页），并呼吁改善安置释放囚犯的框架，但很少有人承认政府如何最近的改革促成并且确实加剧了这些政策失灵。