The standard scale is a system whereby financial criminal penalties (fines) in legislation have maximum levels set against a standard scale. Then, when inflation makes it necessary to increase the levels of the fines the legislators need to modify only the scale rather than each individual piece of legislation.
In English law, the reference in legislation will typically appear like so:
... liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale, or both.
—Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, section 61(4)
Read more about Standard Scale: Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words standard and/or scale:
“Society’s double behavioral standard for women and for men is, in fact, a more effective deterrent than economic discrimination because it is more insidious, less tangible. Economic disadvantages involve ascertainable amounts, but the very nature of societal value judgments makes them harder to define, their effects harder to relate.”
—Anne Tucker (b. 1945)
“I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;Mnot hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,—not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)