New sentencing guidelines for England and Wales address gender and ethnicity but ignore poverty

As so often in such debates, the controversy over new guidelines for courts from the Sentencing Council for England and Wales has obscured as much as it has illuminated. Critics have condemned them as presaging a “two-tier” justice system, a jibe aimed for months at Labour and Keir Starmer, but which has now crossed the parliamentary aisle to be wielded by Labour ministers, too. The lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, wrote to the chair of the Sentencing Council, Lord Justice William Davis, to “make clear my displeasure” at the guidelines, insisting that access to justice “should not be determined by an offender’s ethnicity, culture or religion”. The shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, claimed that “Christian and straight white men… will be treated differently to the rest of society”.

The spit and fury is both overdone and insufficient. The new guidelines are more nuanced than many critics allow, but more profound problems with them are ignored in much of the discussion.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk