Judges "May Be Forced Into Lighter Sentences"

As the Home Office has now been split into two seperate entities, their are fears that the new Ministry of Justice will lead to shorter prison sentances being passed on convicted criminals.

Because of the way that the split has occured, the Prison Service and the Courts Service are now included in the same budget, meaning that the ministry will have to chose between cutting staff levels within the Courts system or setting shorter custodial sentances.

Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice, has some concerns quoted in the Tlegraph article available at the following link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/08/njudges08.xml.

One interesting aspect that is revealed within the article, and something that is indicative o fLabour policy ni general is the fact that due to prison overcrowding the Government has already been attemptting to persuade judges to pass shirter sentances, but these moves have been largely ignored because recent legislation has also required them to pass indefinate sentances on a wider variety of offenses. It's almost like the Government doesn't really know what its doing and is someone else can make sense of their conflicting decisions....