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When the sentencing court defers the imposition of penalty, the usual purpose of such an
exercise is to establish the bona fides and ability of the convicted person to comply with
conditions tailored to change his/her offending tendencies. Invariably, once the pattern
of compliance by the offender is established upon the return date for sentencing, a non-
custodial sentence is imposed. The range of penalties considered by the court on the
return date for sentencing are usuallyinformed bythe behaviour of the offender during the
deferred period. Consequently, the sentencing court tends to adopt the approach
previouslytaken when deferment was originallymade. However, as no further deferment
may be contemplated by the court, although this is not always the case, a final sentence is
called for. If the court is minded to continue the behaviour modification approach it is
not uncommon for the convicted person to be placed upon a suspended sentence subject
to the same conditions during the period of deferred penalty. Deferment of penalty may
thus be seen as a precursor to the imposition of a variety of suspended sentences but
usuallya straightforward suspended sentence onlyis applied.
Before proceeding to the next section where the individual parts of the suspendedsentence
are examined, a summaryof the chapter thus far is required. While the suspended sentence
in Ireland may have emerged as a reasonably standard type of sanction originally, it is
observed that variations of the sanction developed across the various criminal court
jurisdictions. Certain courts placed greater emphasis upon particular types of suspended
sentences. The Central and the Circuit Criminal Courts utilised to a considerable degree the
reviewable sentence. This provided for a review of the custodial sentence which was
followed by the suspension of the remainder of the sentence. Meanwhile courts of
summary jurisdiction developed a distinct variety of suspended sentence by withholding
the warrant of execution conditionally. The former courts were challenged in their
continued use of the reviewable sentence in the Finn case and seem to have replaced the
Butler Order with the nearest analogous variant namely the part suspended sentence.
Meanwhile the summary courts have the opportunity, whether they will avail of it or not,
to abandon their hybrid sanction by fully adopting the procedures of Section 99 Criminal
Justice Act 2006 which will entail the use of a bond where previouslythis was not generally
used. Deferment of penalty is presented as a procedure adopted by the criminal courts as
an interim measure to test the bona fides of the offender and to ascertain his/her ability to
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