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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 3:01 am
Time: 3:01 am
Results for sentencing discretion
1 results foundAuthor: Badejogbin, Oluwatoyin Akinwande Title: Sentencing Reforms in a Postcolonial Society: A Call for the Rationalisation of Sentencing Discretion in Nigeria, Drawing on South Africa and England Summary: Norval Morris' statement that '(n)o principled jurisprudence of sentencing will emerge before legislatures bring order to their penal statutes or before judges routinely provide reasons for the sentences they impose' aptly describes the range of sentencing problems in Nigeria. Although Nigeria attained self-rule in 1960, its criminal justice system remains hamstrung by the colonial mould in which it was framed, unable to respond to the evolving challenges of combating crime in the twenty-first century. The system's failure is acute in criminal sentencing, exacerbated by common law and sharia based penal systems that encourage excessive penalties, a Constitution that offers minimal protection to convicted offenders, and sentencers who exercise largely unfettered discretion. These factors, together with a narrow construction of the doctrine of separation of powers that precludes courts from subjecting statutory penalties to constitutional scrutiny, result in punitive and frequently disproportionate punishments in Nigeria. This thesis investigates measures to ensure that sentencers introduce proportionality to sentencing and refrain from imposing penalties that infringe constitutional rights. The investigation involves two stages of analysis. First, the thesis examines the socio-historical context in which the practice of punishment evolved in England, South Africa and Nigeria in order to unveil how evolving concepts about punishment regulate or fail to regulate penal severity. Secondly, the thesis examined the normative basis of sentencing in South Africa and Nigeria, both of which are constitutional democracies and former English colonies. The analysis leads to two critical findings. First, Nigeria lacks the rich tapestry of constitutional jurisprudence that South African Courts have developed around punishment. Secondly, neither South Africa nor Nigeria has a structured system for rationalising sentencing discretion, with the result that sentencing can lead to widely disparate and disproportionate outcomes in both countries. The thesis thus proposes that Nigeria adopts constitutional provisions that restrain penal severity, and that it harmonise its pluralistic penal system, scrutinise statutory penalties in the light of constitutional norms, and, drawing on practices in England, develop guidelines that enhance proportionality and parsimony in sentencing. Details: Cape Town, South Africa: University of Cape Town, 2015. 381p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed May 27, 2017 at: https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/item/19097/thesis_law_2015_badejogbin_oluwatoyin_akinwande.pdf?sequence=1 Year: 2015 Country: Nigeria URL: https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/item/19097/thesis_law_2015_badejogbin_oluwatoyin_akinwande.pdf?sequence=1 Shelf Number: 145834 Keywords: Criminal Justice Reform Punishment Sentencing Sentencing DiscretionSentencing Reform |