How we can reform community sentencing | Letters

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The idea that naming and shaming offenders will “build confidence” in community sentences is beyond belief (Report, 26 September). I thought we had moved beyond the middle ages. Do ministers not realise that this is playing to the mob and the politics of revenge?

People serving community sentences have already faced the courts and publicly carried out their sentencing. To name and shame adds to their humiliation and the sense that they are pariahs in society. It incites (to my mind, justifiably) resentment. How is this rehabilitation? How does it build a more cohesive and caring society? What builds confidence in community sentencing is that it can boost offenders’ sense of having something to contribute to their local community and society at large.
Ruth Windle
Frome, Somerset

Re your editorial on criminal justice reform (20 September), I believe that the approach used for motoring crimes – a fine and points that accumulate, leading to a driving ban – could be readily adapted to other low-level criminal activity, with the number of points reflecting the seriousness of the offence, and 12 points garnered within, say, three years leading to a sentence of 12 months in jail.

This sword of Damocles approach to sentencing would, as with motorists, serve to concentrate the minds of most petty offenders, by far the majority, and free up overstretched police and magistrates court resources.
Peter Fellows
Bradford