‘Pranks’ and misjudgment with lethal or highly destructive consequences: Towards a principled approach in sentencing youthful folly

Previous commentaries (Stone, 2017a, 2017b) have sought to anticipate the application of the Sentencing Council’s (2017) Definitive Guideline on Sentencing Children and Young People that came into effect from 1 June 2017. It is now possible to gain some appreciation of the Guideline’s impact in light of recent appeal judgements in cases where first trial hearing was conducted and after that the qualifying date, and the sentencers concerned were thus required (by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 s. 125(1)) to follow that guidance. These judgements have featured instances of youthful misconduct where the harm dimension was very significant – either by causing death or huge financial loss, in each instance by fire – but the perpetrator’s culpability was significantly less so, particularly having regard to their age and stage of developmental maturation.