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who got verylong suspended sentences and you knowin those circumstances you would be obliged
to point out to them (the fact that a custodial sentence has been imposed but only conditionally
suspended). I remember having a drugs client who got a sentence of 10 years suspended. He was
over the moon. And from his activities to date, I strongly suspect that the sentence would be
activated, but I remember having difficultypersuading him that that was a reality. Of course at that
time until very recent times all the time I was practising at the Bar, I very rarely if ever heard of a
suspendedsentence beingactivated. It’s much commoner now.”A8J1SC
Irish sentencers appear to invest a certain amount of faith in the deterrent effect of a
suspended sentence on the behaviour of the individual offender, otherwise whywould they
use the sanction so extensively? However, Bottoms suggests that "it is reasonable to
assume provisionally that this sentence has little, if any, special deterrent effect" (1981:18),
when he surveyed the efficacy of the suspended sentence in the literature (Shoham and
Sandberg 1964). Accordingly, by applying the suspended sentence in the belief that the
"special deterrent effect" is efficacious, the court may unwittingly depart from a
proportionate sentence havingregard to the seriousness of the offence.
If the sentencing aims of the court are primarilyto deter the offender from further criminal
behaviour, it maybe argued that the suspended sentence maynot sufficientlyanswer those
aims by ignoring other alternative non-custodial interventions such as the probation order,
the communityservice order and the conditional discharge. Thomas (1974) has described
this tendency by the courts to use the suspended sentence instead of utilising sanctions
specificallydesigned for this purpose as an ambiguous penological approach on the part of
sentencers.
The Irish judges, with the exception of the Respondent in the Supreme Court, tended to
locate the suspended sentence in close proximity to imprisonment or at least within the
orbit of the custodial sentence. However, the tendency of some judges, particularly in the
Circuit Criminal Court to combine the suspended sentence with some form of supervision
by the Probation Service, may simultaneously place the location of the sanction at a
number of different levels of the sentencing scale.
An offender placed on a probation order maybe breached bythe probation officer if s/he
fails to comply with the terms of the probation bond. Moreover, in a straight-forward
probation order the offender is inducted into a formal rehabilitative structure where
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