Existing determinate sentence, where determinate sentence to be passed
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| Circumstance |
Approach |
| Offender serving a determinate sentence (Instant offence(s) committed after offence(s) sentenced earlier) |
Generally the sentence will be consecutive as it will have arisen out of an unrelated incident. The court must have regard to the totality of the offender’s criminality when passing the second sentence, to ensure that the total sentence to be served is just and proportionate. Where a prisoner commits acts of violence in prison custody, any reduction for totality is likely to be minimal. |
Offender subject to licence, post sentence supervision or recall
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The new sentence should start on the day it is imposed: s225 Sentencing Code prohibits a sentence of imprisonment running consecutively to a sentence from which a prisoner has been released. If the new offence was committed while subject to licence or post sentence supervision, the sentence for the new offence should take that into account as an aggravating feature. However, the sentence must be commensurate with the new offence and cannot be artificially inflated with a view to ensuring that the offender serves a period in custody additional to any recall period (which will be an unknown quantity in most cases); this is so even if the new sentence will in consequence add nothing to the period actually served. |
| Offender subject to an existing suspended sentence order |
Where an offender commits an additional offence during the operational period of a suspended sentence and the court orders the suspended sentence to be activated, the additional sentence will generally be consecutive to the activated suspended sentence, as it will arise out of unrelated facts. |