If we look at punishment in modern industrial societies, we can see many of the characteristics of Weber's bureaucratic rationality. Judgments must be made according to rules; authority is vested in position-holders rather than in people themselves (judges can only impose punishments while they are sitting in court; they lose their right to punish when they retire). To the extent that criminal justice systems do not conform to the ideal of bureau¬cratic rationality, there is public criticism. Much of the impetus for sen¬tencing reform in the USA, in England and Wales, and elsewhere in the 1980s was because of inconsistencies in sentencing, and perceptions that judges were sentencing according to their own prejudices rather than according to the facts of the case and the rules of due process (Frankel 1973; Hudson 1987). These criticisms of criminal justice systems in the 1980s can be seen as pointing to inadequacies in relation to bureaucratic rationality: critics of criminal justice in this period used decidedly Weberian language when they posited a 'crisis of legitimacy' (Cavadino and Dignan 1992: 74).