K v SA Police No. SCGRG 93/1796 Judgment No. 4427 Number of Pages 3 Criminal Law and Procedure

The appeal concerns a sentence imposed by the Adelaide Children's Court on the appellant for various offences, including common assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, false imprisonment, robbery in company, threat to life, breach of bail, and using a motor vehicle without consent. The sentence imposed was a period of detention in a Training Centre for one year and eleven months, starting from 15 September 1993. However, the appellant had been in custody for 15 weeks prior to the imposition of sentence. The judge in the Children's Court allowed for one month of this pre-sentence custody time in determining the sentence.

The legal issues the court had to decide were whether the judge should have made a full allowance for the period the appellant spent in custody prior to sentence and whether the judge erred in not considering the full period. The court considered the statutory limits on the power to impose detention under the Children's Protection and Young Offenders Act 1979 and the discretion of the Training Centre Review Board to release a child early from detention. The court also examined the reasoning of the High Court in R v Hoare and R v Easton, which held that the possibility of good conduct remissions should not be taken into account in imposing a sentence.

The court concluded that while there was no statutory requirement to make allowance for time spent in custody, it was a recognized principle of sentencing that such time should be taken into account unless there were adequate countervailing circumstances. The court found that the reason given by the judge for making only partial allowance for the time spent in custody was not sound, as it was not possible to predict the extent to which the Review Board might reduce the sentence. Therefore, the court allowed the appeal and reduced the sentence to one year and eight months, starting from 15 September 1993.