A SENIOR judge hit back at accusations of 'soft sentencing' in courts when he visited a police community forum in Otley.

Judge Norman Jones QC said the public did not know all factors involved in sentencing decisions, and declared he was against revealing previous convictions to jurors before a verdict has been reached.

Judge Jones, the senior circuit judge for West Yorkshire, visited the Aireborough, Horsforth and Otley Police Community Forum last week.

His visit came after concerns raised at an earlier forum over re-offending by convicted criminals and crimes being carried out by defendants on bail.

The forum also wrote to the Home Office, and was told by the Sentencing and Defences Unit that there was concern about 'unduly lenient' sentencing undermining public confidence in the criminal justice system.

But Judge Jones said many significant sentencing factors, such as confidential medical reports, were not made public in court.

He said: "Unfortunately, I think the public too often is fed information through the media which is misleading and very often misguided. We have an anxiety that the judiciary is being brought into disrepute."

He explained the difficulty judges face every day in considering all the factors of a convicted person's circumstances before deciding whether jail is appropriate, and how a long a sentence must be.

Responding to questions from the audience, Judge Jones said he was wholly and completely against the idea of revealing a defendant's previous convictions to the jury during a trial.

"The job of the jury is to try the case on the evidence in front of them," he said.

He added he did not want to see English courts adopt the Scottish system of adding a 'not proved' verdict to the normal options of 'guilty' and 'not guilty'.