ABSTRACT
James Fitzjames Stephen was having none of Du Cane’s and Harcourt’s proposal for shorter sentences on the grounds of a declining prison population and crime rate. He was at his retributive best in the 1885 article below. Stephen also claimed there was much exaggeration as to the want of uniformity in sentencing. Judges consulted with each other on sentencing matters, and there was already “an approach to a customary scale of punishments.” Tacit norms of sentencing, an unwritten scale of punishments, did exist. A rigid set of rules would lead only to greater sentencing injustice. Stephen’s article allows people to understand the reasons why the high court judges so quickly and so unanimously rejected the Du Cane and Harcourt proposals. The only reason suggested for a general diminution in the severity of punishments is that there has been of late years a diminution of crime.
