ZA v R

Sentencing a child or young person requires an individualistic, youth-specific approach directed to preventing offending and promoting welfare. The court must work through the overarching youth guideline and any applicable offence-specific youth guideline before consulting the adult guideline. It must assess the offender’s own role and culpability and respect the limits of a jury’s verdict. Harm caused by others cannot be attributed without proof. Custody is a last resort. Where the custody threshold is crossed, the court must consider a Youth Rehabilitation Order with intensive supervision and surveillance and explain why it is unsuitable. Any use of the adult guideline is a late, rough and non-mechanistic reference. Lawful youth disposals and age-appropriate sentencing procedures must also be considered.

ZA was aged 15 when he participated in a conspiracy to rob. He was convicted at the Central Criminal Court of conspiracy to rob, having pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal and possession of a bladed article. He was acquitted of murder and manslaughter. On 8 July 2022 he was sentenced to five years’ detention for conspiracy to rob, with concurrent six-month terms for the other offences.

He appealed against sentence, arguing that the sentencing judge had wrongly attributed the victim’s death to him, failed to apply the youth robbery guideline and failed properly to consider his individual circumstances and a Youth Rehabilitation Order with intensive supervision and surveillance. The central issue was the proper approach to sentencing a child involved in a wider conspiracy with older defendants.

1. Appeal allowed. The five-year sentence was quashed and replaced with three years’ detention. The concurrent sentences for conspiracy to steal and possession of a bladed article were unlawful and were quashed, with no separate penalty imposed.
2. Youth sentencing approach. Sentencing children and young people requires an individualistic approach directed to the youth justice aim of preventing offending and to the welfare of the child or young person. Developmental and emotional age, maturity, education, vulnerability and personal circumstances must be considered. Children must not be sentenced as though they were adult offenders. The requirements reflected in section 58 of the Sentencing Code were central to the approach.
3. Guidelines. Under section 59 of the Sentencing Act 2020, the court was required to apply the relevant youth guidance. The overarching youth guideline and the youth robbery guideline had to be considered first and in their proper sequence. The youth robbery guideline required assessment of seriousness, aggravating and mitigating factors, personal mitigation, guilty plea credit and a final review of the proposed sentence. The adult guideline could be consulted only after the custody threshold had been crossed and no other sanction was appropriate. The suggested half-to-two-thirds reduction was only a rough guide and could not be applied mechanically.
4. Individual culpability and custody. In sentencing a young defendant convicted of conspiracy, the court must distinguish the defendant’s own role from the wider offending of other participants. The judge had wrongly relied on Khan [2014] 1 Cr App R (S) 10 and Doherty [2018] EWCA 1924 (Crim) to treat the conspiracy collectively. ZA’s involvement was limited to one robbery. His acquittal of manslaughter meant that he could be sentenced only on the basis that he anticipated knives being used to threaten, not to cause injury. The victim’s death could not therefore determine the seriousness of ZA’s offending.
5. Custody is a last resort. If the custody threshold is crossed, the court must consider a Youth Rehabilitation Order with intensive supervision and surveillance and explain why it is unsuitable. ZA’s age, lack of previous convictions, suggestibility, communication and learning difficulties, family concerns, remorse and educational needs made such an order particularly suitable when he was sentenced, although it was no longer appropriate by the time of the appeal.
6. Because the theft and bladed-article offences were not grave crimes, detention was not lawful for those offences; the only possible custodial disposal would have been a detention and training order. The court confirmed that a victim surcharge applied following the reduction of sentence, in accordance with the observations in Jones [2018] EWCA Crim 2994.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — On 30 March 2023 the appeal was allowed. The sentence was reduced and the final reasons were given in [2023] EWCA Crim 596.
• Central Criminal Court — On 8 July 2022 ZA was sentenced to five years’ detention for conspiracy to rob, with concurrent six-month sentences for conspiracy to steal and possession of a bladed article.