Where a juvenile and adult are co-offenders and the adult's sentence is reduced by transitional provisions that do not apply to the juvenile, the parity comparison is made against the sentence actually imposed on the adult, not the sentence that would have been imposed absent the transitional provisions. However, the parity principle does not require an appellate court to reduce a juvenile's sentence to match an excessively lenient adult co-offender's sentence where the juvenile's sentence is already as lenient as can be justified given the seriousness of the offending. Section 7(c) of the Young Offenders Act 1994 (WA) provides that a juvenile is not to be treated more severely than an adult for the same offence, but this must be assessed against the sentence actually imposed.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 27 later cases that cite this judgment.
15 of the 27 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.