R v Jordan Crewe

In a reference against an unduly lenient sentence, totality requires a proportionate sentence for the offending as a whole, but does not permit arbitrary reductions to otherwise appropriate sentences. Where related offences are sentenced concurrently, the sentence for the principal offence must reflect the additional criminality represented by the concurrent offences. The court must stand back from arithmetic aggregation and assess overlap, double counting, aggravating and mitigating features, and the risk of over-sentencing. An appellate court may intervene where the sentencing structure fails to give proper weight to distinct criminality and produces an unduly lenient aggregate sentence.

The Solicitor General referred sentences imposed by the Crown Court at Cardiff under Criminal Justice Act 1988, s.36. The offender had pleaded guilty to harassment, controlling or coercive behaviour, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and intentional strangulation. The Recorder imposed an aggregate sentence of two years’ imprisonment, including consecutive sentences for harassment and controlling or coercive behaviour and concurrent sentences for the other offences.

The reference did not challenge offence categorisation, starting points, category ranges, guilty-plea credit or the basic consecutive/concurrent structure. It challenged reductions made for totality and the failure to increase the sentence for controlling or coercive behaviour to reflect the additional criminality in the concurrent offences.

1. Reference allowed. The sentence was unduly lenient and the court intervened under Criminal Justice Act 1988, s.36.
2. The totality principle requires a just and proportionate aggregate sentence. It is not a mathematical exercise, and simple arithmetical addition of individual sentences does not determine the correct result. The court must stand back and assess the offending as a whole, including overlap, aggravating and mitigating features, and the risk of over-sentencing where separately charged offences are also incidents of an overall course of coercive conduct.
3. The Recorder gave no principled reason for reducing the sentences for harassment and controlling or coercive behaviour below the sentences properly indicated after trial, beyond the guilty-plea adjustment. There was no overlap between those offences justifying the final reductions.
4. By making the sentences for assault occasioning actual bodily harm and intentional strangulation concurrent, without otherwise adjusting the sentence for controlling or coercive behaviour, the Recorder failed to give proper weight to the additional criminality represented by those offences. That was a significant error of principle.
5. The least aggregate sentence properly available was 34 months: seven months for harassment and 27 months for controlling or coercive behaviour, with the other orders unchanged. The court stated that this was the lowest sentence that could reasonably be passed.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): The Solicitor General was granted leave to refer the sentence. The reference was allowed. The sentence imposed by the Crown Court was quashed in part and substituted with an aggregate sentence of 34 months’ imprisonment.
• Crown Court at Cardiff: Mr Recorder Rouch imposed an aggregate sentence of two years’ imprisonment on 18 February 2025.