INTRODUCTION

Crime and punishment has always been a topic of great interest. The quotes provided reflect some of the controversies surrounding sentencing in contemporary western societies. Judges have been termed ‘the gatekeepers of the legal system’ (Wrightsman, 1999:vii). Since the 1970s the judiciary in western countries has undergone unprecedented expansion in both its size and power. The expanding judicial role is evident in the appointment, training and scrutiny of members of the judiciary (Malleson, 1999). At the same time there has been increasing tension between the requirement of judicial independence and accountability created by the changes that have taken place. The reader should note in this context that, as the experience in the UK since the 1990s shows, the growing politicisation of sentencing policy ‘threatens to marginalize principled and empirically based arguments about sentencing’ (Ashworth, 2007:99).