Equality Before the Law and Equal Impact of Sanctions: Doing Justice to Differences in Wealth and Employment Status

The principle of equality before the law requires that sentencing decisions should treat offenders equally irrespective of wealth, race, colour, sex, employment, or social status; and the principle of equal impact requires that sentences should be calibrated to create an equal penal impact on offenders subject to them. Like cases should be treated alike and different cases differently. However, sentencing law has grappled with the problem of which differences are to be considered relevant, while theorists have debated about how the principles of equality before the law and equal impact can be accommodated within retributive or consequential theories and reconciled with the principle of parsimony and issues of efficiency in the administration of criminal justice.