Engagement

The Council routinely engages with organisations and individuals. It aims to respond to correspondence within 20 working days, providing information when reasonable and appropriate in relation to areas within the Council’s remit. In developing sentencing guidelines, it engages with a range of relevant organisations and individuals, including representative groups, justice organisations, and academics. The Council also conducts a written public consultation in relation to each guideline and commissions a range of research designed to obtain the views of the public both in a general and on individual bases.

Neither the Council nor its staff can comment on, or provide advice about, individual cases, or intervene in any way in sentencing decisions, and it is important that they are not perceived as doing so. Where views on such cases may be relevant to the Council’s work programme, the Council will give consideration as to how these might appropriately be taken into account. Nor will the Council or its staff participate in, or promote, campaigns where that will give rise to a risk that the Council is being seen to take a position of an activist or political nature. However, where appropriate, the Council may assist the promotion of educational or informational material relevant, or related, to its work, or to the justice system more generally.