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fine or an order for communityservice? Where is the extraction of punishment for wrongs
done evident in such a suspended sentence if all that is required is that the offender merely
keep the peace and be of good behaviour? It is not unknown for Irish sentencing courts
to take account of compensation paid to victims for injury and monetary loss. The
payment of civil penalties in advance of sentence maybe taken into account when deciding
upon the cumulative sum of penalties (People (DPP – v – Redmond [2001] 3 IR 390). In
the case of many white collar criminal offences the payment of compensation in advance
mayprovide the tippingpoint between a custodial anda suspended sentence.
As noted, the Irish judges tend to locate the suspended sentence in the overall scheme of
sentencing very close to the actual custodial sentence where particular emphasis is placed
upon the issues of avoiding custodial sentences and deterring offenders from committing
further offences. The high status ascribed to the sanction however maynot be reciprocated
by offenders themselves. Additionally, public perceptions of the sanction may not concur
with this elevated position of the sanction. While the perceptions of offenders and the
public on this issue have not been surveyed in Ireland, consistent findings from other
common lawjurisdictions would appear to challenge the viewthat the suspended sentence
finds its natural place or may be located anywhere near the upper end of the sentencing
scale .
Studies elsewhere of offender and public perceptions of the suspended sentence have
tended to locate the sanction at very low levels in the scale of penalty and severity.
Sanctions which are immediate and demanding such as the custodial sentence or the
payment of a fine are perceived to be more severe than the suspended sentence which is
frequently regarded as a non-demanding sanction. Indeed, in many of the studies, even a
conditional discharge with probation was perceived to be higher up on the severity scale
(Walker and Marsh 1984:27, Karpadis and Farrington 1981:107, Edney and Bagaric
2007:357). The immediacy of any punishment appears to be the defining characteristic for
the purpose of scaling the penalty. Because the suspended sentence is attenuated and
contingent, it appears to recede rapidlydown the scale of severityin the viewof the public.
There is no reason to believe that offenders in Ireland do not ascribe the same placement
for the suspendedsentence as do the general public in these studies.
As previously noted in the discussion on the rationales for the sanction, O` Malley claims
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