Thread by @SCynic1

This is the general sentencing guidance.
“For offenders on the cusp of custody, imprisonment should not be imposed where there would be an impact on dependants which would make a custodial sentence disproportionate to achieving the aims of sentencing.” /
sentencingcouncil.org.uk/droppable/item…

https://twitter.com/tonydowson5/status/1668254898725462017

Carla Foster was on the cusp - the judge said an earlier plea would have enabled him to suspend.
On the guidance she met every criteria for a suspended sentence, and none for an immediate custodial sentence, except for length.
The length was arrived at by stating that /

an earlier case - plainly more serious - would now be considered too lenient.
I doubt that myself, but it’s an odd thing to say unless that was a view expressed generally. It isn’t. These offences are extremely rare. I wonder, therefore, if the Judge consulted anyone else. /

In hope he did not & I’m certainly not asserting that he did. Had he done so I would regard that as wrong in principle: the judge who sentences is the judge who hears the case. No one else. Asking colleagues what they’d do is one thing: asking if the existing precedent is too /

lenient is quite another.
In my view, bidding yourself up to a figure that you then reduce by just too little to enable you to suspend is wrong in principle.
Catt was a 5 year starting point. This case was less serious.The Judge reduced his starting point by 40% /

to reflect the mitigation. Mrs Catt did not have a disabled child.
Had the Judge said the 5 year start point in Catt represented the upper limit & started at around 4 years, he’d have applied the 40% discount for mitigating circumstances & ended up with 29 months. /

The Judge gave a 20% discount for plea. That would be 23 months & he could have suspended the sentence.
The entirety of the sentence, therefore depends on saying that a more serious case would have attracted a higher sentence today.
The sentencing remarks do not make clear /

whether the Judge asked for submissions on that conclusion. I hope he did, but it is concerning that, if so, he did not address them. If not, then counsel was not able to address the determinative issue.
This is so marginal a decision that the failure to ask what purpose is /

achieved by an immediate custodial sentence is one I find genuinely worrying. As far as anyone can tell from the sentencing remarks, the answer is nothing but the immediate detriment of the living children, the impact on whom is not addressed in the smallest detail, even though /

the courts generally recognise that sentencing women to custody is far more detrimental to children than sentencing men to custody.
Instinctively it feels wrong to me, but I’ve done this thread because I can’t see the answers to specific questions from the public remarks.