ABSTRACT
The need to sustain public confidence in the administration of justice means that public opinion plays an important, albeit indirect role in sentencing policy and practice. This has probably always been the case. For example, writing of the evolution of criminal law policy in the eighteenth century, Radzinowicz noted that the parliament of the day was "not indifferent to the pressure of public opinion" (1948, p. 38). Politicians, too, have frequently referred to the need to reflect or incorporate the views of the public in the evolution of sentencing policy. For example, the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher spoke of"the very real anxiety of ordinary people that too many sentences do not fit the crime" (cited in The Economist 1985; see Ashworth and Hough 1996 for a fuller discussion).
