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eporting function to inform the Prosecution of any breach of the suspended sentence?
Unlike the Butler Order, the straightforward suspended sentence is not subject to review.
If conditions are breached, the court will not know about this unless the matter is re-
enteredbywayof breach proceedings.
The conditional nature of the suspension of the sentence of imprisonment, it is argued, is
an essential tenet of the sanction. The requirement of the convicted person to observe the
conditions of the suspended is prospective in character. The sentencing court’s intention to
control the future behaviour of the convicted person, who remains under threat of
imprisonment for breach, finds its nexus in the declared and acknowledged obligation of
the convictedperson to complywith those conditions.
What might happen if a sentencing court suspended a sentence unconditionally? The
writer is aware of the making of such disposals where a court suspends a term of
imprisonment for a defined period of time but does not oblige the convicted person to
enter into any recognisance to keep the peace or to be of good behaviour or to be bound
by any other condition. In the case of People (DPP) –v- Martin Byrne, Keane C. J.
observed:
“… the Court would observe … that it would deprecate a practice which appears
to be adopted on occasions in the Central Criminal Court and is obviously on
occasion also in the Circuit Criminal Court of suspending unconditionally the last
six months of a sentence because that is really … reducing the sentence by that
period”. (Keane C. J., People (DPP) –v- Martin Byrne Court of Criminal Appeal
ex tempore 19 th of January, 2004).
It is argued here that such sentences which are unconditional, superficially retain the
character of a suspended sentence because a custodial sentence has been imposed which is
then suspended for a definite period of time. However, as such sentence is incapable of
activation on the grounds that no breach of anycondition maypossiblybe committed, the
sentence might be considered a nullity. Indeed this seems to be the observation of Keane
C. J. in the Martin Byrne case above. This is especially so in light of the claim that the
suspended sentence is essentially a device to control the future behaviour of the convicted
person. At another level, such a sentence ironically answers the criterion of avoidance of
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