North, R. v

In sentencing multiple robberies, the court must apply the applicable guideline by assessing both harm and culpability. A participant in a joint robbery may be party to a co-offender’s weapon threat, despite playing a lesser role. Ransacking a vulnerable victim’s home is a serious harm feature.

The totality principle requires an overall sentence that is just and proportionate to the whole course of offending. Mitigation, rehabilitation prospects and full credit for guilty pleas remain material, but cannot support a suspended sentence where they leave the punishment materially below the seriousness of repeated robberies.

The Attorney General referred the offender’s sentence under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 as allegedly unduly lenient.

At Bradford Crown Court, the offender had pleaded guilty to two robberies and an attempted robbery committed with her co-offender. Two offences involved repeated intrusions into the home of her vulnerable 70-year-old grandfather. During the first, the co-offender threatened him with a hammer and the house was ransacked. The third offence was a shop robbery in which the offender carried out reconnaissance and took money while her co-offender struggled with the shopkeeper.

The sentencing judge imposed concurrent terms of two years’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, with a drug dependency treatment requirement, curfew and rehabilitation activity requirement. The central issue was whether that aggregate sentence was unduly lenient.

1. The Attorney General’s reference was allowed. The concurrent suspended sentences were unduly lenient and were quashed.

2. For the first dwelling robbery, the co-offender’s use of a hammer to threaten the victim established medium culpability. The offender was a party to that threat. The court accepted that she was substantially less involved than her co-offender and might have been frightened of him, but the most favourable proper assessment was at least Category 2B under the robbery—dwelling guideline. The ransacking of the victim’s home was a Category 1 harm feature, and the case could not be treated as involving no or minimal physical or psychological harm.

3. The attempted robbery was less serious because no weapon was used and nothing was taken. It nevertheless constituted a second intrusion against the same vulnerable victim only days after the first robbery. The court accepted the prosecution’s categorisation and held that a three-year sentence after trial would have been unobjectionable if that offence had stood alone.

4. The shop robbery was properly Category 3B under the robbery—less sophisticated commercial guideline. Although the offender’s role was limited, she conducted reconnaissance and took the money while a co-offender known to be ready to use violence attacked the shopkeeper. The custody threshold was plainly passed.

5. Totality required a sentence that provided just and proportionate punishment for all three offences, whether sentences were concurrent or consecutive. The judge’s wish to promote rehabilitation was understandable, but a total sentence after trial of three years fell well short of that requirement. Even allowing full credit for the guilty pleas, the least proper aggregate sentence was four years’ imprisonment.

6. The substituted sentences were eight months’ imprisonment on count 1, 40 months’ imprisonment on count 2 consecutively, and 24 months’ imprisonment on count 3 concurrently: a total of four years’ imprisonment, subject to release on licence. The offender was ordered to surrender to Trafalgar House Police Station by 4 pm that day.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — by [2019] EWCA Crim 282, allowed the Attorney General’s reference, quashed the suspended sentences and substituted an aggregate term of four years’ imprisonment.
• Crown Court at Bradford — on 18 December 2018, imposed concurrent terms of two years’ imprisonment suspended for two years, with treatment, curfew and rehabilitation requirements.