By Eric King-
A man caught providing drugs to Bristol Prison has himself been sent to prison after the Solicitor General, Robert Buckland QC MP, referred it to the Court of Appeal for being too lenient.
Jason Weeks, a 26 year old criminal Weeks was originally sentenced at Bristol Crown Court in May where he was sentenced to 16 months’ imprisonment suspended for 24 months. Today, after the Solicitor General’s referral, the Court of Appeal increased his sentence to 15 months immediate custody, with the one month reduction due to recent progress he has made. The review and new judgement also goes a long way to showing that too often judges deliver soft sentences, or more to the point, wrong sentences. The solicitor general has successfully referred a number of sentences for review, and this may call for more training and expertise of judges. Judges are expected to have a very good judgement when it comes to sentencing, after all that is why they are judges isn’t it?
However, Robert Buckland MP, the Solicitor General concluded the sentence was too lenient and referred the sentencing to the Court of Appeal .The 26-year-old had been stopped by police after he was spotted on CCTV throwing drugs over the prison wall at the jail in Horfield. He had flung the drugs from a car into the part of the prison where the exercise yard is. After cops stopped and searched Weeks, they discovered more drugs in the vehicle, as well as at Weeks’ home, where he was also growing cannabis. Altogether, Weeks was responsible for over 1.5kg of cannabis and synthetic cannabinoids.
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The review and new judgement also goes a long way to showing that too often judges deliver soft sentences, or more to the point, wrong sentences. The solicitor general has successfully referred a number of sentences for review, and this may call for more training and expertise of judges. Judges are expected to have a very good judgement when it comes to sentencing, after all that is why they are judges isn’t it? Drug supply is obviously a serious offence, any qualified judge should know that, making it a huge embarrassment for the dopey judge who thought it was alright to give a supplier of drugs a suspended sentence.
Judges who give sentences that are later concluded to be too lenient should suffer a blow to their reputation for the poor judgement. Everybody has different levels of judgement, but a judge’s decision should not be so poor that the Solicitor General decides to review it, and actually successfully has it changed on so many occasions.
Commenting on the imprisonment, the Solicitor General said:
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“Weeks risked seriously undermining the important role Bristol Prison plays in many of its inmates’ rehabilitation, in particular the work they do to address substance misuse. I am pleased that the Court of Appeal has today agreed to increase his sentence to show that crimes of this nature will not be tolerated.”
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