A sentence of four years detention for a juvenile offender for dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing two deaths and grievous bodily harm was upheld where the offender was travelling at double the speed limit in a stolen car, was unlicensed, and the sentence was inflated under the Griffiths approach to reflect overall criminality across an extraordinary number of offences. When adopting the Griffiths approach of inflating the head sentence to reflect overall criminality, sentencing judges should make the basis for sentencing express in their remarks, identifying which sentences have been inflated and to what extent. Sentences imposed under the Youth Justice Act 1992 (Qld) with s 227 release provisions are not directly analogous to adult sentences and should not be characterised as equivalent adult sentences.
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