R v Mark Bradley

When sentencing an offender for crime committed as a child, the court must apply the Sentencing Council’s guideline for children and young persons even if the offender has become an adult. It must begin with the sentence likely to have been imposed shortly after the offending. The adult sentence may exceed the youth maximum only for good reason; adulthood at sentence is not itself sufficient.

For an offence predating sentences for later offences, the court must first sentence the instant offences with totality in mind. It then has a discretion to make further allowance for the earlier sentences. A restraining-order condition must also have a clear and workable scope.

The appellant was aged 16 when he took part in a robbery. He was later convicted of further offences. When aged 19, he committed theft of a motor vehicle and aggravated vehicle taking.

At the Crown Court at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he received four years’ detention in a young offender institution for all three offences. He appealed his sentence, the restraining order and the driving disqualification. The central issues were the proper approach to delayed sentencing for childhood offending, totality, and whether part of the restraining order was workable.

1. Appeal allowed in part. The four-year total sentence was manifestly excessive. It was varied to two and a half years’ detention in a young offender institution.

2. The sentencing judge should have applied the Sentencing Council’s Overarching Guidelines: Sentencing Children and Young Persons. As explained in R v Ahmed [2023] EWCA Crim 281, the applicable starting point was the sentence likely to have been imposed shortly after the robbery, when the appellant was a child. The court was entitled to take account of subsequent events when assessing culpability, but the appellant’s later adulthood did not itself justify departure from the youth sentencing approach.

3. On the information now available, the likely Youth Court sentence for the robbery was an 18-month detention and training order. The court also had to consider whether further allowance was appropriate because the robbery predated offences for which the appellant had already served sentences. An 18-month sentence for robbery, consecutive to the one-year sentence for theft of the Renault, produced a total of two and a half years.

4. The disparity complaint failed. A possibly merciful sentence imposed on a co-defendant did not prevent the appellant from receiving his proper sentence.

5. The part of the five-year restraining order prohibiting the appellant from attending places where the victim might reasonably be expected to be was unworkable and unnecessary because its scope was uncertain. It was deleted. The prohibition on coming within 100 metres of the victim remained, as did the remainder of the order. The five-year duration was upheld. The driving disqualification was varied to two years, with a 15-month uplift and no extension period.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Allowed the appeal in part and varied the sentence, restraining order and driving disqualification.

• Crown Court at Newcastle-upon-Tyne: On 2 April 2024, imposed four years’ detention in a young offender institution for robbery, theft of a motor vehicle and aggravated vehicle taking.