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sentence. Thus, the degree to which the sentence may be characterised as participatory
and communicative will vary from court to court depending on the manner in which the
sentencing judge deals with the accused either by way of a formal bond or a spoken
communication.
Thus, while a formal consent is required before a court may make a community service
order, a formal consent is not required for each categoryof suspended sentence, except for
a suspended sentence under Sec. 99 Criminal Justice Act 2006. In particular a suspended
sentence in the District Court where no recognisance is used completely obscures any
element of consent. But the performance of conditions attached to a suspended sentence
is essentially prospective in character. Accordingly, the giving of consent by an offender
by entering into a recognisance might be seen as only an initial but static feature of the
process. In contrast, the continuous compliance by an offender over the operative period
must be seen as a dynamic rendition of the same consent. The distinction is important
because a consent to abide by conditions of a suspended sentence must endure for the
period of the suspension and must not be seen to evaporate on the signing of the
recognisance. Arguably, the success of a suspended sentence as a crime prevention
instrument may be measured by the degree to which the offender regards him/herself
bound by the original consent given in the recognisance or by the rapidity by which s/he
resiles from such consent.
In summary, the suspended sentence has been described by O’Flaherty J. as “a very
beneficial jurisdiction for Judges to possess” (O’Brien –v- Governor of Limerick Prison
1997 supra) but the benefit of such jurisdiction, it is argued, must be seen to diminish in
almost direct proportion to the failure of the offender to comply with such conditions
where such breaches are unknown to the court.
In this section it has been shown howthe suspended sentence is triangulated on three key
elements. The first time component is the actual sentence of imprisonment and the
second time component is the period of suspension. As noted the period of suspension is
unregulated but the practice of suspending the sentence for a long period may find its
origins in judicial attitudes where a long period of compliance is required of the offender.
The final component of the sanction, namely the conditions invest the penalty with a
distinctly prospective purpose but the particular efficacy of each individual suspended
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