Deterrence and community protection are not co-extensive purposes of sentencing. Where an offender's mental illness reduces the significance of deterrence but also makes them a potential danger to the community, the need to protect the community must be separately and expressly considered by the sentencing judge. Failure to do so constitutes House v The King error. A sentencing judge who treats an offender's mental illness only in a manner favourable to the offender — reducing moral culpability and the significance of deterrence — without addressing the countervailing danger the offender poses to the community, falls into error.
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