Dyer, R. v

A post-conviction anti-social behaviour order requires a finding of anti-social behaviour and a judicial assessment that the order is necessary to protect persons from further anti-social acts. Necessity must be assessed in the context of the sentence. Relevant matters include its nature, length and likely effect, the effect of previous sentences, and any period of licence.

Conditions must also be necessary and proportionate to that protective purpose. Their appropriateness depends on the individual offender and the evidence before the court. A condition that extends beyond the area of offending, or imposes an unjustified intrusion on liberty, may be varied or removed.

The appellant pleaded guilty to multiple offences arising from street dealing in heroin and cocaine in the St Paul’s area of Bristol. On 4 May 2010 he received concurrent sentences of four years’ imprisonment and a post-conviction anti-social behaviour order.

The single judge refused leave to appeal against sentence but granted leave to challenge the order. The appeal concerned whether an order was necessary in light of the sentence and the appellant’s record, and whether three restrictions were properly framed: an exclusion zone, non-association with named people, and conditions relating to mobile telephones.

1. The appeal was allowed in part and the anti-social behaviour order was varied. The court upheld the sentencing judge’s conclusion that an order was necessary. The appellant’s serious and escalating drug offending, his failure to comply with a previous community order, and the sentence and likely licence conditions entitled the judge to conclude that the statutory conditions were met.
2. For a post-conviction order, necessity must be considered in the context of the sentence. The relevant considerations are the nature and length of the sentence, its likely effect on the defendant, the nature, length and effect of previous sentences, and the duration, conditions and likely effect of any licence period. Although the sentencing judge could have addressed those matters more fully, the conclusion reached was open to him.
3. The geographical exclusion condition was too wide. There was no evidential basis before the court to extend it to Montpelier, Baptist Mills and St Andrews. It was varied so that it was confined to the specified part of St Paul’s bounded by Ashley Road and Lower Ashley Road.
4. The prohibition on association with named persons remained necessary, provided that the appellant received sufficient identification to know who they were. The requirement that any mobile telephone used by him be registered in his own name was also necessary, given the use of a phone in the offending and the role of unregistered phones in drug dealing.
5. The further requirement to register a telephone with police intelligence officers was struck out. No justification for that additional intrusion on liberty had been advanced. The court stressed that its conclusions on the order and its conditions were fact-specific and, because the prosecution had not appeared, created no precedent on the particular conditions.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Allowed the appeal in part by varying the anti-social behaviour order. It upheld the necessity of an order but narrowed the exclusion area and removed the police-registration requirement for a mobile telephone.
• Sentencing court: On 4 May 2010, imposed concurrent terms of four years’ imprisonment for the drug-dealing offences and made the anti-social behaviour order. The court and citation are not stated in the judgment.
• Single judge: Refused leave to appeal against sentence, but granted leave to appeal against the anti-social behaviour order.