Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
11:45 am
Christine Stewart: I think that that is right. The clause affects the way in which the tariff for indeterminate sentences—discretionary life sentences—is currently set. At the moment, when the court imposes a discretionary life sentence, it must decide what period to set for punishment and deterrence. The remainder of the sentence is effectively determined by the Parole Board.
In setting the tariff, the court considers what sentence would have been imposed were it to have imposed a determinate sentence and what period would then be served by the offender. It would look at the overall headline sentence and then halve it, because the offender would only serve half of that sentence. A discretionary life sentence, by its very nature, belongs in the category of particularly serious offences. Such a sentence could not be imposed unless the courts decided that it was a very serious offence. In those cases, when the courts look at setting the tariff, they look at guidelines. For example, in something like rape, including rape of a child, the maximum sentence in the range set out by sentencing guidelines is 19 years, which would be about nine and a half years.
In the case of a discretionary life sentence, there could be circumstances that suggest that the offence is so serious that the equivalent determinate sentence does not go far enough to mark the seriousness. In those rare cases, the court would have the discretion to say that if that is the starting point, it would not half the sentence—it may reduce it by a lesser proportion so that it could mark the seriousness of the offence.