R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Naughton
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 04 September 1996 |
| Date | 04 September 1996 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
Queen's Bench Divisional Court
Before Lord Justice Simon Brown and Mr Justice Popplewell
Criminal sentencing - consecutive sentences - time in custody to be deducted from total sentence
To determine what period to deduct from the sentence of a prisoner who was serving consecutive sentences, in respect of any period spent by him in custody on remand prior to those sentences being imposed, regard should be had to section 104(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 1967, so that one looked at the total sentence rather than its individual elements when computing the appropriate reduction.
The Queen's Bench Divisional Court so held when giving reasons for dismissing on August 29 an application for judicial review by John Thomas Naughton of the decision of the Home Secretary on August 23 to suspend the current Home Office instruction to prison governors giving guidance, inter alia, on their duties to release prisoners, and which the applicant alleged applied to the calculation of his release date.
Section 67 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967, as amended by section 49 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, provides:
"(1) The length of any sentence of imprisonment imposed on an offender by a court shall be treated as reduced by any relevant period…
"(1A) In subsection (1) above 'relevant period' means (a) any period during which the offender was in police detention in connection with the offence for which the sentence was passed; or (b) any period during which he was in custody - (i) by reason only of having been committed to custody by an order of a court made in connection with any proceedings relating to that sentence or the offence for which it was passed or any proceedings from which those proceedings arose; or (ii) by reason of his having been so committed and having been concurrently detained otherwise than by order of a court."
Section 104 provides: "(2) For the purposes of any references in this Act, however expressed, to the term of imprisonment or other detention to which a person has been sentenced or which, or part of which, he has served, consecutive terms and terms which are wholly or partly concurrent, shall … be treated as a single term."
Mr Peter Weatherby for the applicant; Mr David Pannick, QC and Mr Pushpinder Saini for the secretary of state.
LORD JUSTICE SIMON BROWN said that the specific point concerned prisoners serving consecutive sentences of...
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