Jersey Unreported Judgments

Inferior Number Sentencing - breach of Community Service Order and Probation Order.

[2015]JRC265

Royal Court

(Samedi)

18 December 2015

The Attorney General

-v-

James Alberto Lopes Veloso

Sentencing by the Inferior Number of the Royal Court, on a breach of a Community service Order and Probation Order imposed on 6^th July, 2015, on the following charge:

Age:  20.

Plea: Guilty.

Conclusions:

Breach of Community Service Order and Probation Order:- 14 months' youth detention.

Destruction of BB Gun sought.

Order to discharge previous orders sought.

Sentence and Observations of Court:

Breach of Community Service Order and Probation Order: 9 months' youth detention.

Destruction of BB Gun ordered.

Previous orders to be discharged.

C. M. M. Yates, Esq., Crown Advocate.

Advocate P. S. Landick for the Defendant.

JUDGMENT

THE DEPUTY BAILIFF:

1.        When the Court sentenced you on 6^th July, 2015, to 180 hours' Community Service Order and an 18 month Probation Order for a count of affray, it warned you in very clear terms what you should expect if you breached the order and did not comply with the things that the probation officer told you to comply with.  As we have found, you have breached the probation Order by your behaviour and you have not performed the community service and all of that has been unsatisfactory.  You have, so the Court has found, threatened staff; you have had the benefit of final warnings, including one from the Solicitor General, but it is clear that you cannot in the circumstances of the requirement to interact with the Probation Service, control your temper.  You do not take responsibility for your behaviour and you did not take it when you were asked about your behaviour in evidence today. 

2.        The only offence for which you were sentenced involved the use of scissors and a BB gun and normally that would have involved a prison sentence.  It is quite clearly potentially violent behaviour and it is in that light that your threats to the Probation Service officers were all the more concerning. 

3.        You have shown that, notwithstanding the chances given to you, you do not respond to non-custodial measures and that is unfortunate because this is in distinction to the way you are apparently able to deal with other aspects of your life as shown by the references that were put before the Court. 

4.        We have considered the mitigation that has been advanced to us and your advocate has done all that he possibly can on your behalf.  However, in the light of the very clear warning you were given, this Court feels it has no alternative but to substitute a custodial measure for the non-custodial measures that had previously been handed down.

5.        Accordingly we revoke the Probation Order and the Community Service Order and you are sentenced to 9 months' youth detention. 

Authorities

AG-v-Veloso [2015] JRC 152.