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Does it make any difference if a person is sentenced to 10 years in prison or 10 years in prison with 5 years to run concurrently . Seems to me that he has essentially got away with whatever offence resulted in the concurrent part of the sentence .
would imagine it'd make a difference if they reoffend.
If buy 4 drinks, all priced £3.50, can I pay for them all concurrently with the same £3.50?
Always puzzled me when reporting court cases as well.
I mainly used to do the juicier ones and in one case a prolific burglar was sentenced concurrently for something like 50 offences.
I guess he would never have seen daylight again otherwise.
often the headline sentence is inflated to reflect its aggravation by the concurrent matters .
Concurrent sentences are normally only imposed for offences which form part of the headline sentence. not for separate crimes. For example burglary of dwelling to steal car keys crime one , taking and driving off in the car on the drive crime two. these would normally be concurrent , but dangerous driving in said car some time later would often be consecutive.
Concurrent sentences can be used to structure sentencing so that it does not Offend against Totality, eg a persistent shoplifter could easily fall to be sentenced for a total of 20 offences, say at 6 months each that makes 10 years for shoplifting whereas a nasty burglar up for a serious burglary could get 5 years , is repetition of shoplifting really twice as bad as burglary?
also it is good practice to mark each offence , what would happen if you sentenced for offence 1 but did not impose a sentence for 2 because it was academic and the defendant was later cleared of offence 1 should he walk away scot free on 2?
As seosamh says it will affect sentencing in any future case. It also means if they successfully appeal one of the cases they don't get out. It does, intuitively seem wrong that someone sentenced for say 5 similar offences doesn't appear to get any longer than if they were sentenced for just the most serious one.
The flip side is jailing someone for 5x the period costs society a fortune, for potentially little benefit, and makes it more likely the person insists on going to trial on each charge putting the state through more expense and more witnesses through the trauma/inconvenience of giving evidence.
Another way of looking at it, is that British judges take into account the total cumulative effect of any sentence. 5 concurrent 5 year sentences may be more palatable to the 'victims' than say 5x 1yr sentences served consecutively, the net effect is the same - but both to the victim and anyone likely to be deterred by the sentence the 5yr for one offence option seems larger.
Decisions about concurrency depend on how connected the incidents were. e.g. often there would be separate prosecutions for breaking into a house and stealing the contents. It makes sense that those are sentenced as one cumulative effect. The prosecutor brings both charges because it may be that in court one part falls. In contrast if someone breaks into a house doesn't steal anything and then in a totally unrelated incident a few weeks later pick pockets someone those are two different courses of conduct and would usually be sentenced consecutively.