Institute of Criminology Public Seminars: 'Responding to the Culpable State - Is Sentence Mitigation Appropriate?'

At sentencing, the court’s scrutiny falls exclusively on the offender’s criminal conduct. From a retributive perspective, the sentencing hearing addresses the nature and degree of harm caused or threatened as well as the offender’s culpability for that harm. At no point in the hearing does the state hold up a mirror to examine its own conduct; there is no self-censure or even self-examination. The court assumes the state is blameless. Yet there may be grounds for such an exercise. The state may have acted wrongfully in a manner and to an extent that has consequences for sentencing the offender. The volume we are launching here examines ethical questions related to whether state wrongdoing should be taken into account when the victim of the misconduct appears for sentencing. Should the state’s misconduct mitigate the sentence – and if so to what extent – for a defendant who is the victim of that wrongful conduct?

Speakers:

Leo Zaibert (Cambridge): “Sentence Mitigation as a Response to Intrinsic State Injustice”

Gabrielle Watson (Edinburgh): “Police Misconduct and Sentence Mitigation”

Jesper Ryberg (Roskilde): “Standing to Punish, Sentence Mitigation and the Applicability Challenge”

Nicola Padfield (Cambridge): “Postscript”

Alison Liebling (Cambridge): Chair

A drinks reception for informal conversation will take place in the lower ground floor seminar room for all who attend in person.

To register to attend in-person or online, see the Institute of Criminology website. 

If you wish to be added to the seminar mailing list, please contact: events@crim.cam.ac.uk

Please note seminars and events are recorded (not Q&A sessions).