Terdapat begitu banyak nas-nas undang-undang yang memberikan panduan mengenai prinsip undang-undang yang perlu dipatuhi dalam menjatuhkan hukuman terhadap seseorang pesalah. Mahkamah antaranya merujuk kepada penghakiman Hilbery J di dalam kes Rex v. Kenneth John Ball 35 Cr App R 164 yang memutuskan seperti berikut: “In deciding the appropriate sentence a Court should always be guided by certain considerations. The first and foremost is the public interest. The criminal law is publicly enforced, not only with the object of punishing crime, but also in the hope of preventing it. A proper sentence, passed in public, serves the public interest in two ways. It may deter others who might be tempted to try crime as seeming to offer easy money on the supposition, that if the offender is caught and brought to justice, the punishment will be negligible. Such a sentence may also deter the particular criminal from committing a crime again, or induce him to turn from a criminal to an honest life. The public interest is indeed served, and best served, if the offender is induced to turn from criminal ways to honest living. Our law does not, therefore, fix the sentence for a particular crime, but fixes a maximum sentence and leaves it to the court to decide what is, within the maximum, the appropriate sentence for each criminal in the particular circumstances of each case. Not only in regard to each crime, but in regard to each criminal, the court has the right and the duty to decide whether to be lenient or severe. … “It is for these reasons, and with these purposes in view, that before passing sentence the Court hears evidence of the antecedents and character of every convicted person.”