The Ellis principle requiring considerable leniency for voluntary disclosure of unknown offences has two distinct components: (1) the personal features informing remorse and reducing the need for personal deterrence, and (2) the policy feature of encouraging guilty persons to come forward. The sentence imposed must be assessed against whether it would encourage or deter a person in the offender's position from confessing. JIRS statistics cannot be used arithmetically to determine a starting point for sentence, particularly where the statistical sample does not distinguish between different categories of the offence. The majority declined to find special circumstances warranting variation of the statutory ratio, while Adams J would have found the Ellis factors constituted special circumstances.
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