Coroners and Justice Bill
1:40 pm
Peter Lodder: A judge would be very reluctant to do that. You sentence according to the relevant principles for the punishment or rehabilitation of the offender. If you sentence according to cost implications you come back into the realms of—I cannot remember, was it a year or so ago?—judges saying, “I’m not sending you to prison, because I have been told that they are full and our political masters say that I must not send any more people to prison.” It is wholly wrong, in our judgment, for any sentence to be passed on that basis. I can appreciate that the tension may exist.