Sentencing the multiple offender : judicial practice and legal principle
This study examines the approach of Victorian judges to the determination of sentence for an offender convicted of multiple offences. Given that a substantial percentage of criminal cases involve a multiple offender and that the majority of offences are committed by repeat offenders, the sentencing of such offenders is a matter of significant public policy interest. The study is based on qualitative interviews with a group of Victorian County Court judges, an analysis of sentencing data on rape, armed robbery and burglary from Victorian County Court records, and a legal review of High Court decisions and Victorian Court of Appeal decisions. The study examines the way judges apply the totality principle in sentencing multiple offenders; whether sentences imposed these cases conform to the principle of proportionality; and whether proportionality, in respect to the multiple offender, can be expressed as a detailed policy, with associated guidelines. The empirical work undertaken in this study indicates that there is a need to develop a more detailed and comprehensive set of sentencing principles and an associated numerical framework for guidance.
More Than One Crime: Sentencing the Multiple Conviction Offender
Multiple-offence sentencing can take many forms; there is no common profile to multiple-offence offenders. These cases can consist of two or many more crimes; the offences may have been committed within a short or longer period of time; they could be the product of a single criminal undertaking or several; they could be of the same type or of different types; they could be of very different degrees of seriousness; they could have been committed within the same geographical area or not; they could involve one or many victims. What all multiple conviction cases have in common, however, is that the offences are distinguished, charged, and convicted separately but sentenced in the same hearing. The importance of studying multiple-offence cases is highlighted by the fact that, unsurprisingly, the number of offences is highly correlated with the severity of sentence.1
Judicial Backgrounds and Criminal Cases
differences in the decisions of the judges analyzed.? Various other scholars of the judicial process have compiled data on the different decisional tendencies of American judges, but they similarly have not shown that these decisional propensities correlate with differences in the backgrounds of the judiciary.2 It is the purpose of this paper to explore the empirical relationships between various background and attitudinal characteristics of judges and their decisions in criminal cases.3