The Essential Guide to Sentencing in NSW aims to improve efficiency of legal research by providing a summary of relevant cases in a way that can be easily accessed and adopted for the writing of submissions and judgments.
Chapter 1 focuses on sentencing Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander offenders, with particular emphasis on the applicable case law. Chapter 2 examines addiction, good character, hardship to third parties, intoxication, mental illness, guilty pleas, prior convictions, youth offenders, and parity between children and adults. Chapter 3 considers assistance to authorities, remorse, and advanced age. Chapter 4 covers double counting, offences committed in the presence of a child, in home of victim, and for financial gain as well as breach of trust and planning. Chapter 5 includes assessing objective seriousness of drug-related offending and of historical sexual assault offences. Chapter 6 provides commentary on general and specific deterrence, child pornography, denunciation, rehabilitation and likelihood of reoffending, rehabilitation and individualised justice, and recognition of the harm done to the victim of the crime and the community. Chapter 7 delves into section 5 threshold, section 10(1)(b), recording of a conviction, and intensive correction orders. Chapter 8 explains case law on accumulation and concurrency, aggregate sentences, commencement date, Form 1 offences, non-parole period, pre-sentence custody, quasi-custody, sentencing discretion, special circumstances, standard non-parole period, and totality. Finally, Chapter 9 deals with local court disposition, delay, fact finding at sentence, guideline judgments, parity, sentencing statistics and comparable cases, and victim impact statements.
Features
Written from the perspective of a serving sentencing judge, who has observed firsthand what is required in relation to information about appellate decisions, this text aims to assist:
• practitioners in preparing their written and oral submissions through a checklist of recent appellate decisions they can rely upon;
• judicial officers in accessing summaries of cases applicable to sentencing exercises; and
• students in understanding general sentencing principles and their application in practice and in preparing for mock sentencing proceedings and other forms of assessment.
Related Titles
• Yoo, Criminal Procedure and Sentencing in Western Australia
• Hemming et al, Criminal Procedure in Australia, 3rd edition
