A sentencing judge exercising criminal jurisdiction with respect to children must give proper consideration to the principles in s 6 of the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987, including the recognition that children's immaturity makes them vulnerable to the influence of older persons, and that greater weight may be given to rehabilitation at the expense of general deterrence. Failure to articulate these principles constitutes fundamental sentencing error. Where co-offenders are charged with different offences on different facts, parity principles have limited or no application, and a sentencing judge errs in assessing one offender's criminality by reference to an aggregate starting point adopted for another offender whose criminality involves different offences. The proper interpretation of s 6(3) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1912 — specifically whether, once error is demonstrated, the appellate court must still find the sentence outside the discretionary range — remains unsettled and may warrant five-judge consideration.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 14 later cases that cite this judgment.
6 of the 14 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.