The proposals enunciate a set of reasonably clear basic principles, notably the acceptance of desert or proportionality as the appropriate guiding principal for sentencing. Deterrent thinking is explicitly rejected as a means of determining the incidence and duration of custodial sentences. There is also a new willingness to address issues of consistency and fairness within the criminal justice system rather than presenting short-term and incoherent proposals. The central proposal in the white paper is for the creation of a sentencing statute in England that will provide a coherent framework for the use of financial, community, and custodial punishments. The paper proposes to keep the power of deciding the severity of sanctions within the judiciary, and it states that the use of custody must be confined to serious cases only. Community penalties are viewed as sentences standing in their own right, not as mere alternatives to custody. The greatest weakness in the proposals is that community penalties may be mixed at the discretion of the court. Proposals related to breach and parole are discussed as is judicial sentencing discretion. 55 footnotes