Sentencing the Multiple Offender: Towards Detailed Sentencing Statistics for Armed Robbers

Abstract

Recently, Lovegrove developed a decision model describing how judges in Victoria apply the totality principle to determine sentences for offenders convicted on multiple counts. The model, taking the form of a set of working rules, is empirically based but springs from the legal analyses of Thomas and Ashworth. This article describes a new study in which this conceptual framework is used to analyse archival sentencing data in order to show quantitatively the relationship between the effective (head) sentence determined for a case and the component sentences fixed for its comprising counts. The sample comprised 69 multiple-count cases in which armed robbery was the principal offence. They were..