Existing determinate sentence, where determinate sentence to be passed |
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| Circumstance | Approach |
| Offender serving a determinate sentence (instant offences committed after offences 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 |
The new sentence should start on the day it is imposed: section 225 of the 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. |
| Offender subject to an existing community order imposed by a magistrates’ court | If an offender, in respect of whom a community order made by a magistrates’ court is in force, is convicted by a magistrates’ court of an additional offence, the magistrates’ court should ordinarily revoke the previous community order and sentence afresh for both the original and the additional offence (see below under non-custodial sentences for further guidance).
When sentencing both the original offence and the new offence the sentencing court should consider the overall seriousness of the offending behaviour taking into account the additional offence and the original offence. The court should consider whether the combination of associated offences is sufficiently serious to justify a custodial sentence. The court must take into account the extent to which the offender complied with the requirements of the community order. |
| Offender subject to an existing community order imposed by the Crown Court | Where an offender, in respect of whom a community order made by the Crown Court is in force, is convicted by a magistrates’ court, the magistrates’ court may, and ordinarily should, commit the offender to the Crown Court, in order to allow the Crown Court to re-sentence for the original offence. The magistrates’ court may also commit the new offence to the Crown Court for sentence where there is a power to do so. Where the magistrates’ court has no power to commit the new offence it should sentence the new offence and commit the offender to the Crown Court to be re-sentenced for the original offence. When sentencing both the original offence and the new offence the sentencing court should consider the overall seriousness of the offending behaviour taking into account the additional offence and the original offence. The court should consider whether the combination of associated offences is sufficiently serious to justify a custodial sentence. The court must take into account the extent to which the offender complied with the requirements of the community order. |