ABSTRACT

United States, [just deserts] influence has been substantial.’ He was undoubtedly correct at the time and since then there is no doubt that just deserts has enjoyed continuing influence, particularly, for example, in the writing of Scandinavian penal codes, with low mandatory minimum sentences (von Hirsch 1993, Tham 1995). Equally, in the United States, Minnesota, a state which seems to have the most highly developed sentencing grid for the purposes of implementing the just deserts philosophy, and which limits judicial discretion within narrow maximum and minimum bands (von Hirsch et al. 1987), has one of the lowest state levels of imprisonment in that country (although at 226 per 100,000 of population this still puts it way ahead of all other OECD countries). In contrast, the English Criminal Justice Act 1991 which had been strongly influenced by this philosophy quickly became politically unacceptable and the principles of proportionality that were ensconced within it were largely abandoned. Instead, the emphasis has since been on punishment fitting the criminal rather than the crime. Those elements of liberal individualism which had informed the just deserts philosophy now seem to have given way to a much more intolerant punitiveness.