The guidance in Winch v The Queen on sentencing for glassing offences (recklessly causing serious injury) applies with even greater force to the offence of intentionally causing serious injury. Evidence of a causal link between an offender's mental health problems and the offending is required before reduced moral culpability can be treated as a mitigating factor under the first Verdins principle. A victim's failure to provide a victim impact statement is not a mitigating factor. Truly exceptional family hardship — such as a profoundly deaf partner and an autistic child with no alternative family support — can justify suspension of a sentence that would otherwise require immediate imprisonment, but the sentence must remain adequate having regard to the objective gravity of the offence.
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