School of Law academics co-author literature review for the Scottish Sentencing Council
The Scottish Sentencing Council is an advisory non-departmental public body that produces sentencing guidelines for use in the High Court of Justiciary, sheriff courts and justice of the peace courts.
The Scottish Sentencing Council have recently published a literature review co-authored by School of Law Associate Professor in Quantitative Criminology Dr Jose Pina-Sánchez and Postgraduate Researcher Ana Veiga, on the challenges of comparing sentencing across jurisdictions.
Cross-jurisdictional research is far from straightforward, but if done sensibly (i.e. acknowledging the wide differences in law and practice) it can be a remarkably useful approach to inform sentencing reform and the design of guidelines.
Dr Pina-Sánchez and Ms Veiga were part of a group of five expert academics from universities across the UK who explored 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.
