Introduction
The court may request further pre-sentence reports or information before sentencing. This could be prior to sentencing on the current charges or following further offending.
In these cases, the information or reports provided to the court will depend on several factors:
- the judge’s request or indication
- type of original report
- offender’s circumstances
- previous information provided to court
- the time since last report.
All subsequent requests must be reviewed and consideration given to writing a new report. All requests from court must be appropriately recorded so that CPPS can allocate and count the appropriate resources.
Reference: For more information see Volume 1, Part II, Chapter 1, the topic Considering Which Report to Complete.
Request for appendix alone
A request from a judge for an appendix only must be treated as an indication that the judge requires the pre-sentence report to canvass the possibility of an electronically monitored sentence.
When a judge requests an appendix, a full report with an appendix must be prepared.
Note: An appendix alone is not a pre sentence report and should not be provided to the court as such.
Although the full report will consider the possibility of an electronically monitored sentence, the probation officer must consider all possible sentencing options and make the most appropriate sentencing recommendation. This may or may not be an electronically monitored sentence.
Reference: This Volume, Part II, Chapter 2 Considering Sentencing Options.
Oral information
In some cases, subsequent information can be provided to the court as oral information.
An oral report can be provided to the court (by way of the CPPS court officer) when updating information about:
- programme availability
- community work availability
- response to current sentence
- compliance with current sentence/special conditions
- specific information requested by the court.
Note: Oral information can be provided as a written memo and can be used to provide the court with attached information, such as a recent pre-sentence report or information about a programme.
Reference: This Volume, Part II, Chapter 5 Oral/On-strength Reports.
Where original is a short report
If the court requests a subsequent report and the offender has had a short report use the table below to determine which subsequent report to provide.
The time allocation for each report and the sentencing options available must be taken into account when deciding which report to complete.
|
If the offender’s…
|
then...
|
| circumstances have not changed |
assess whether an oral report can be provided to the court or whether a new short report with updated information is required. |
| circumstances have changed |
assess whether a new short report OR a full report is required. |
| commits new offending |
complete the process as a new report request.
|
Where the original is a full report with appendix
If the court requests a subsequent report, and the offender has had a previous full report with appendix, use the table below to determine which subsequent report to provide.
The time allocation for each report and the sentencing options available must be taken into account when deciding which report to complete.
Note: If it will take a lot more than two hours to update the original report a new full report must be completed.
|
If the offender’s circumstances have…
|
then prepare a...
|
| not materially changed (i.e. same address, similar offending, etc) |
short report, cross referenced to the original full report and appendix, updating/amending any information as necessary. |
| materially changed, for example the offender has proposed a new address, or there are new occupants at the existing address, new offending |
new full report, cross-referenced to the original full report and updating/amending the information as necessary. |
If an appendix is requested after the full report
If an appendix is requested after an initial full report has been presented to the court, it must be attached to a new full pre-sentence report.
The new full report must update the previous full report, and in particular the following three sections:
- Motivation to change
- Summary
- Recommendation(s).
Presenting updated information in a pre-sentence report
When presenting the updated information, the probation officer must prepare a new report and can either:
- cross-reference back to the original report
Note: If this is done the first section of the report must clearly state that this report updates the information in the previous report. Each section should indicate where the information is the same or updated. The previous report should be provided as an attachment.
OR
- copy and paste the unchanged information from the original report.
Note: If this is done it is important to check that the previous information is still accurate and current before copying and pasting from the previous report. Ensure that all information is relevant for each section of the new report.
