7.4 Sentencing Decision and Problems in Sentencing Decision Making

The decision's architecture — what the sentencer weighs:1. The offence: gravity, harm, the victim's vulnerability, violence or deception employed, the amounts involved.2. The offender: age (the young and the very old), record (first offender vs recidivist), motive, role (principal vs accessory), health and dependents.3. Aggravating factors: premeditation, cruelty, abuse of position or trust, targeting the vulnerable, organised conduct, previous similar convictions, obstruction.4. Mitigating factors: provocation or duress's residue, youth, pleading and cooperation, restitution to the victim, remorse, the Lamichhane-type social-stigma circumstances (the 5- year course — Unit 3), time already served in custody.5. The purposes' balance: retribution's ceiling, deterrence's message, rehabilitation's method (Unit 5's composite verdict); the statute's own purposes-and-grounds discipline (the 2074 Act). The problems:6. Disparity — like cases unlike sentences across benches and districts (the consistency deficit; no sentencing guidelines commission in Nepal).7. Unguided discretion — wide statutory ranges without structured starting-points; the appellate sentence-review's unevenness.8. The custody-default — the prison reflex (overuse of imprisonment where fines/community service would serve; Unit 6's overcrowding driver).9. The victim's absence — harm's voice under-weighted; compensation orders rarely pursued to execution.10. Remand-time's accounting — inconsistent crediting of pre-trial custody.11. Mandatory minima and the tariff debates — rigidity vs. individualisation.12. Appeal asymmetry — the prosecution's and defence's unequal sentence-appeal practice; enhancement fears. The prescribed cases — sentencing's Nepali jurisprudence:The case is the standard…