Hearing the voices of victims and offenders : the role of emotions in criminal sentencing.

摘要

Sentencing is widely viewed as an objective and scientific exercise, whilst emotionsudhave long been regarded as a danger to the rationality of the legal realm. For thatudreason, emotions have traditionally been kept at arm’s length from the sentencingudexercise. However, the last two decades have witnessed something of anud‘emotionalisation’ of law and criminal justice. It is now widely contended thatudemotions may enrich our justice system through bolstering therapeutic jurisprudence,udprocedural justice, through the quality of decision-making and may even transformudrelationships between victims and offenders. A number of mechanisms have beenuddeveloped in recent years which provide victims and offenders with limited means toudexpress their emotions to the court and these may be taken into account as part of theudsentencing exercise. Whilst these developments are broadly welcomed, the authorsudquestion the overall capacity of criminal courts rooted in a retributive tradition toudenrich justice through a better understanding of human emotions.