Where an offender's personal circumstances — including youth, vulnerability, domestic violence history, role as non-principal offender, and extensive cooperation with law enforcement — powerfully reduce personal culpability, a sentence well below the range for comparable offences may be justified as a proper exercise of judicial discretion, not constrained by previous sentences which are not precedents. The informer's discount under ss 13A and 13B must be 'discernible and worthwhile' and sufficient to incentivise cooperation; discounts of one-third to one-half are not uncommon, with no fixed ceiling. The Court of Appeal retains a residual discretion not to return an applicant to custody where the proportion of sentence already served and personal circumstances make the remaining period effectively trivial.
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