Osinski, R v

Where several serious offences form a course of domestic abuse, concurrent sentences for associated offending may be appropriate. However, the lead sentence must adequately reflect the additional gravity of the prolonged detention, violence and repeated sexual offending.

An extended sentence is required where the offender presents a significant risk of serious harm through further specified offences and an appropriate determinate sentence would not adequately protect the public under section 226A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

The Solicitor General referred the offender’s sentence under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 as unduly lenient. At Truro Crown Court, the offender had received an aggregate determinate sentence of 11 years and six months’ imprisonment for controlling or coercive behaviour, false imprisonment, three rapes, assaults and criminal damage committed against his intimate partner.

The rape counts each received concurrent terms of ten years’ imprisonment. The sentence for controlling or coercive behaviour, 18 months’ imprisonment, was consecutive. The reference concerned whether the concurrent rape terms properly reflected the additional offending and whether the offender should have received an extended sentence because of dangerousness.

1. The reference was allowed. The court held that the ten-year sentences for each rape count were unduly lenient. It substituted extended sentences of 15 years on each rape count, comprising 13 years’ custody and a two-year extended licence period. Those concurrent extended sentences were to run consecutively to the existing 18-month sentence for controlling or coercive behaviour. The remaining sentences were unchanged.

2. The Recorder correctly treated the rapes as the lead offences. Each fell within category 2A of the applicable definitive guideline, with category A culpability because of earlier violence against the same victim and category 2 harm because of severe psychological harm and degradation. Yet the detention of the victim over several days, her prevention from escaping, the violence used to return her to the flat, and the breach of a suspended sentence made the overall course of criminality more serious.

   The associated offences could properly remain concurrent with the lead offences. However, that approach required the lead terms to reflect their seriousness. A term of at least 13 years was required for each rape count.

3. The Recorder also erred by declining to impose an extended sentence under section 226A of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The conduct was not short-lived when the wider coercive behaviour, false imprisonment, escalating prior offending and failures to comply with court orders were considered. The offender plainly presented a significant risk of serious harm to the public through further specified offences, and that risk could not be addressed by the determinate sentence that should otherwise have been imposed.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — On the Solicitor General’s reference under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the court granted leave and held that the sentence imposed below was unduly lenient: [2019] EWCA Crim 1686.
• Crown Court at Truro — On 10 July 2019, the offender received an aggregate determinate sentence of 11 years and six months’ imprisonment.