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

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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 selected from cases heard in the Victorian Court of Criminal Appeal between 1985 and 1994 (inclusive). The theoretical significance of this work is that it uses archival data to quantify an algebraic model — reciprocal function — representing the judges' approach to this sentencing problem. The practical product of this study is a method for developing, for the assistance of judges, detailed sentencing statistics: these could be used to generate an effective sentence from the sentences fixed for counts comprising a case, according to sentencing practice.

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