On Monday, Sean Hogg, 21, was sentenced to just 270 hours of community
service for raping a 13-year-old girl in a park.
The judge in the case, Lord Lake, said that had Hogg been aged 25 or over,
he would have been sentenced to between four of five years in jail.
However, under new sentencing guidelines introduced last year, Scottish
courts are told to treat those aged up to 24 much more leniently than other
adults.
It is claimed that younger offenders have much more capacity for
rehabilitation and that they are less accountable for crimes as their brains
have not yet fully developed.
Lord Lake claimed that a jail sentence for Hogg, who was 17 when he carried
out the attack, would not be “appropriate” due to his age and because prison
would not aid his rehabilitation.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...-sentence-snp/