After the defendant is convicted, the court that she
is tried in, will decide the appropriate sentence in the shape of a
punishment. However, convictions can cause ramifications outside of the
sentence given, that is called collateral consequences of criminal
charges. Such convictions can be referred to as minor convictions, that
are in impact, may be a warning conviction and does not extremely affect
the defendant. An individual with a variety of convictions in their
past can have a lot of collateral consequences of the criminal charges,
and a history of convictions are call antecedents or ‘previous’
convictions. Despite minor convictions not affecting the defendant an
excessive amount of, they still show on a person’s record as a previous
conviction.

A defendant is sentenced by a judge after she or he
has either pleaded guilty to a criminal offence or been found guilty of a
criminal offence following trial within the courts. A choose or
magistrate can make the choice as to the appropriate sentence for the
defendant’s offence that they committed, by taking into account totally
different important factors, as well as the facts of the case, the
utmost penalty and any sentencing guidelines punished. The law relating
to the criminal justice system is basically found in the Criminal
Justice Act 2003.

The
Criminal Justice Act 2003 has aimed to provide understandable and a lot
of variable sentencing guidelines. It has included the purposes of
sentencing; the principles behind sentencing, as an example, the
reduction in sentence for a guilty plea, the principles regarding
previous convictions and offences committed whilst on bail, and
statutory aggravating factors; terms relating to totally different sorts
of sentence and after they may be applied; terms relating to the
sentencing of dangerous offenders; and provisions in relation to
unharness of offenders.

The 2003 Act conjointly sets out the most
sentences for specific offences, setting out the most severe penalty a
court will grant and the most sentences depending on the seriousness of
the offence. For offences such as murder, theft and some sexual
offences, the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. These maximum
penalties should be applied to the foremost serious and extreme criminal
cases and it’s the choose or magistrates duty to make a decision the
appropriate sentence for the offence that the defendant has committed.