Chapter 6 of The Sentencing Act 2020 allows for the court to impose extended or life sentences if an offender is considered ‘dangerous’ and is convicted of a ‘specified offence’.

‘Dangerous’ is defined as, “a significant risk to members of the public of serious harm occasioned by the commission by him of further specified offences”.

‘Serious harm’ means death or serious personal injury, whether physical or psychological

A ‘specified offence’ is a specified violent, sexual or terrorism offence.

The court:

(a)must take into account all the information that is available to it about the nature and circumstances of the offence,

(b)may take into account all the information that is available to it about the nature and circumstances of any other offences of which the offender has been convicted by a court anywhere in the world,

(c)may take into account any information which is before it about any pattern of behaviour of which any of the offences mentioned in paragraph (a) or (b) forms part, and

(d)may take into account any information about the offender which is before it.

The CPS provides guidance on the sentencing of dangerous offenders. 

1. Guidance on the assessment of significant risk: Lang and others [2005] EWCA Crim 2864

“(i) The risk identified must be significant. This is a higher threshold than mere possibility of occurrence and in our view can be taken to mean (as in the Oxford Dictionary) “noteworthy, of considerable amount or importance.”

(ii) In assessing the risk of further offences being committed, the sentencer should take into account the nature and circumstances of the current offence; the offender’s history of offending including not just the kind of offence but its circumstances and the sentence passed, details of which the prosecution must have available, and, whether the offending demonstrates any pattern; social and economic factors in relation to the offender including accommodation, employability, education, associates, relationships and drug or alcohol abuse; and the offender’s thinking, attitude towards offending and supervision and emotional state…

(iii) …In a small number of cases, where the circumstances of the current offence or the history of the offender suggest mental abnormality on his part, a medical report may be necessary before risk can properly be assessed.

(iv) …Repetitive violent or sexual offending at a relatively low level without serious harm does not of itself give rise to a significant risk of serious harm in the future. There may, in such cases, be some risk of future victims being more adversely affected than past victims but this, of itself, does not give rise to significant risk of serious harm.

(vi) …It is still necessary, when sentencing young offenders, to bear in mind that, within a shorter time than adults, they may change and develop. This and their level of maturity may be highly pertinent when assessing what their future conduct may be and whether it may give rise to significant risk of serious harm.

(vii) In relation to a particularly young offender, an indeterminate sentence may be inappropriate even where a serious offence has been committed and there is a significant risk of serious harm from further offences (see for example, R v D [2005] EWCA Crim 2282).”

2. Members of the public includes everyone, and may be a specific individual/group: Lang and others [2005] EWCA Crim 2864

“The risk to be assessed is to “members of the public”. This seems to be an all-embracing term. It is wider than “others”, which would exclude the offender himself. We see no reason to construe it so as to exclude any particular group, for example prison officers or staff at mental hospitals, all of whom, like the offender, are members of the public. In some cases, particular members of the public may be more at risk than members of the public generally, for example when an offender has a history of violence to cohabitees or of sexually abusing children of cohabitees, or, as in one of the cases before us, (Feihn) where the offender has a particular problem in relation to a particular woman.”

3. Significant does not require a numerical probability: Pedley and others [2009] EWCA Crim 840

“…it is wholly unhelpful to attempt to re-define ‘significant risk’ in terms of numerical probability, whether as ‘more probable than not’ or by any other percentage of likelihood. We doubt very much that the probability of future harm is capable of numerical evaluation. No attempt should be made by sentencers to attach arithmetical values to the qualitative assessment which the statute requires of them. Such would, moreover, be inconsistent with the degree of flexibility inherent in the word ‘significant’…”

4. Mitigating factors may also bear on dangerousness: Johnson [2006] EWCA Crim 2486

“We considered arguments based on the inadequacy, suggestibility, or vulnerability of the offender, and how these and similar characteristics may bear on dangerousness. Such characteristics may serve to mitigate the offender’s culpability. In the final analysis however they may also serve to produce or reinforce the conclusion that the offender is dangerous.”

5. Admissible information will be determined on an individualised basis: R v Considine; R v Davis [2007] EWCA Crim 1166

“We have deliberately declined to lay down any hard and fast rules about how the court should approach the resolution of disputed facts when making the section 229 assessment. In reality, there will be very few cases in which a fair analysis of all the information in the papers prepared by the prosecution, events at the trial, if there has been one, the judicial assessment of the defendant’s character and personality (always a critical feature in the assessment), the material in mitigation drawn to the attention of the court by the defendant’s advocate, the contents of the pre-sentence report, and any psychiatric or psychological assessment prepared on behalf of the defendant, or at the behest of the court itself, should not provide the judge with sufficient appropriate information on which to form the necessary judgment in relation to dangerousness.”