‘A Vexed Question’: Sentencing Historic Youthful Offending
| Published date | 01 April 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225416686173 |
| Date | 01 April 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Legal Commentary |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1473225416686173
Youth Justice
2017, Vol. 17(1) 73 –84
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225416686173
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Legal Commentary
‘A Vexed Question’: Sentencing
Historic Youthful Offending
Nigel Stone
A residual, downstream issue for youth justice concerns the sentencing of those who offended
as juveniles but do not come before a criminal court until later, sometimes much later, in life.1
Such instances most commonly feature youthful sexual offending where the victim, espe-
cially where she or he too was a child when offended against, has been inhibited in making
complaint or disclosure, whether through some sense of shame, embarrassment, distrust, fear
of recrimination/blame or of not being believed, intimidation or emotional conflict over what
is for the best. Alternatively, the victim may have disclosed in a more timely way informally
but has been silenced, either by disbelief or a response that the issue should be dealt with and
resolved in some extra-penal manner. The prosecution of historic crime may also arise in the
context of homicide or other grave offending where it is not apparent until much later that a
crime has been committed (e.g. by the belated discovery of a body) or the identity of the
perpetrator comes to light only through advances in forensic science.
This Commentary seeks to outline and illustrate the principles and approach applied in
England and Wales in light of recent authoritative interpretation in guideline judgements
in the Court of Appeal, principally in R v Hall and others2 [2012] 1 WLR 1416, [2012] 2
Cr App R (S) 21, Attorney General’s Reference No. 32 of 2016 (R v B.) [2016] 2 Cr App
R(S) 20 and R v Forbes and others [2016] EWCA Crim 1388. It should be noted that,
summary offences apart, there are no statutory limits on the prosecution of crimes in this
jurisdiction or elsewhere in the United Kingdom, in contrast to Statute of Limitations
provisions applying in many jurisdictions in the United States and in mainland Europe.
General Principles
Date of the offence
As a fundamental starting point, it is well established that this date determines: (1) whether
the defendant’s conduct now attracts criminal liability (i.e. was the behaviour in question
Corresponding author:
Nigel Stone, School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, Elizabeth Fry Building, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.
Email: n.stone@uea.ac.uk
686173YJJ0010.1177/1473225416686173Youth JusticeStone
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