Jersey Unreported Judgments

[2009]JRC059

ROYAL COURT

(Samedi Division)

3^rd April 2009

The Attorney General

-v-

James Christopher Power

Sentencing by the Inferior Number of the Royal Court, following guilty pleas to the following charges:

Age:  23.

Plea: Guilty.

Details of Offence:

The defendant was released from prison in September 2008 having served time for robbery.  He committed a number of further offences during November and December 2008.  He pleaded guilty to the following charges on arraignment on 9^th February, 2009.

i) On 4^th November, 2008, the defendant broke into three rooms at the Mountview Hotel and stole various property worth a total of £688 (Counts 1-3).  The rooms had been used as winter lets at the time.

ii) During the first week in December 2008, the defendant criminally received property, including cash and charity boxes, stolen from another break-in at a public house (Counts 4-5).

iii) On 5^th December, 2008, the defendant attended a private party and stole a mobile telephone and an iPod belonging to another guest (Count 6).

iv) On 6^th December, 2008, the defendant stole a total of nine bottles of vodka from two different supermarkets (Counts 7 and 8).  The defendant was arrested shortly thereafter.

Details of Mitigation:

Offences were committed in the context of a continuing drug addiction.  Guilty pleas and residual youth.

Previous Convictions:

The defendant has 6 previous convictions for theft and related offences including breaking and entering in 2001.  He had been released from prison only a few months previously, having served time for robbery.

Conclusions:

Total:  2 years' 7 months' imprisonment.

Sentence and Observations of Court:

The defendant undoubtedly deserved to go to prison.  However the Court was impressed by the Alcohol and Drugs Report.  In all the circumstances prepared to treat this as an exceptional case. 

Total:  18 month probation order and treatment order for 12 months' and 180 hours' community service order and a drug treatment order.

The Court observed that it otherwise would have sentenced the defendant to 2 years' imprisonment.

H. Sharp Esq., Crown Advocate.

Advocate L. K. A. Richardson for the Defendant.

JUDGMENT

THE deputy bailiff:

1.        Mr Power, you were released from Prison in September 2008, but within a couple of months you had committed the offences that you are before us for now.  That is three counts of breaking and entries of three rooms of a hotel, although it was on one occasion, two counts of receiving stolen property and three counts of larceny, two of them being shoplifting. 

2.        Your problem is your drug dependency.  You commit offences to get money to buy drugs.  As the background reports says "his entrenched drug use is the major risk factor in terms of assessing risks of future offending".  So you undoubtedly deserve to go to prison but the background report in this case urges that you are now genuinely motivated to conquer your drug addiction and to try and turn your life around.  We are also impressed with the report of Mr Gafoor of the Drug and Alcohol Service who similarly recommends a treatment order and we pay particular attention to his views.

3.        So, in all the circumstances and in the hope that you can indeed turn your life around and stop this cycle of offending, we are prepared to take the exceptional measure of imposing an individualised non-custodial sentence. 

4.        We are going to impose a probation order of 18 months on all the counts and linked with that will be a treatment order for 12 months and that means you must attend the Alcohol and Drugs Service as directed and you must remain abstinent from all non prescribed medication confirmed by routine and random drug testing and you must also comply with treatment goals of the Service and if directed by them, take the opiate blocker under supervision.  But you must also be punished for these offences.  Therefore we are going to impose a sentence of community service which you must carry out as well.  Having considered the matter we think that the correct overall prison sentence would have been one of 2 years had we imposed an immediate sentence with all the sentences being concurrent.  We think the community service equivalent of that would be too much because we do not wish to set you up to fail and we wish you to concentrate particularly on the probation and the treatment order.  So we are going to impose a community service for 180 hours on counts 1 to 3 concurrent and 120 hours concurrent on all the remaining; so that is 180 hours in total. 

5.        Let me give you a clear warning Mr Power.  You have been very fortunate today; custody was by far the most likely sentence.  We are doing this in the hope that you really can take advantage of this opportunity but if you fail, in the sense that you come back before us having re-offended or if you don't comply with all the directions of the Probation Officer or the Drug and Alcohol Service or if you don't carry out the community service as directed, then you will be brought back and, if you are brought back, custody will be the only option that we can see.  We hope that you take advantage of this opportunity.

Authorities

AG-v-Moreira [2003] JRC 083A.

AG-v-Da Silva 1997/218.