1. REMORSE AND PUNISHMENT

Under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines typical of sentencing statutes generally in this respect, an offender may mitigate his sentence by “accept­ance of responsibility” The extent of the reduction depends upon the seriousness of the crime though in general the longer the sentence the smaller the proportion of the reduction (USSG 3E1.1 background notes).

141 government prosecutorial resources have been conserved plays very little role (O’Hear, 1997; Sarah 1999).

The application notes which once included remorse as a factor no longer mention it, except in passing (O’Hear 1997) Yeh judges juries attorneys, and academics have acknowledged that remorse is one of the most impor­tant considerations in sentencing (Sundby, 1998; Eisenberg Garvey & Wells 1998).

Why do we have this intuition that remorse should matter to criminal sentencing? Is this intuition correct? If so why do our sentencing systems tend to skirt the question? I answer below that, while traditional theories of punishment fail to explain ‘‘the remorse discount,’’ remorse is a critically important factor in sentencing even in cases involving serious crimes Acceptance of a defendant’s sincere remorse changes the nature of sentenc­ing Instead of punishing a remorseful offender that is imposing pain to cancel a debt, deter or teach we sanction a remorseful offender imposing a settlement not a retribution that is necessary to put an end to remorse itself In short I conclude that for the remorseful defendant we sentence in order to mitigate remorse rather than using remorse to mitigate sentence

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