DPP v Green [2020] VSCA 23

• Difficult childhood included history of drug and alcohol abuse and serious sexual and violent abuse while in custody resulting in serious mental health issues: at [54]
• At conclusion of current sentence will have spent all but 22 months of 25 years in custody: at [88]

[93] It was in the interests of the community that the sentences imposed on the respondent be such as to enhance, rather than undermine, his rehabilitation prospects. In view of the respondent’s history of repeated incarcerations, there was, in any event, a significant prospect that, by the completion of the further term of imprisonment imposed by the judge, he would have become institutionalised, so that his prospects of rehabilitation would thereby be compromised. Nevertheless, in the particular facts of this case, it was material that the total effective sentence, to be imposed on the respondent, not be such as to crush those prospects, with the consequence that, on release, the respondent readily return to his offending conduct.(DPP v Stone [2003] VSCA 208 at [20])

• Appeal by DPP dismissed in view of subjective mitigating factors including ‘need to ensure that, in the end, the sentences allow some scope for the rehabilitation of the respondent on the completion of his sentence of imprisonment’: at [97]