Sentencing POCA 2002 offences—concurrent or consecutive? (R v Cooper, Park & Fletcher)

Article summary

Corporate Crime analysis: The Court of Appeal combined three separate otherwise unrelated cases to consider the approach to totality when sentencing a defendant for an offence contrary to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA 2002) which represents a criminal benefit for other substantive offences. The court reviewed the authorities in respect of totality and whether a sentence should be consecutive or concurrent. The court identified the following principles when approaching the sentencing exercise—the overriding consideration will be whether the overall sentence is the shortest term that is commensurate with the seriousness of the offence, or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it; where the POCA 2002 offending adds nothing to the culpability and harm of the substantive offending, it will be appropriate to impose a concurrent sentence with no upward adjustment; where POCA 2002 offending involves additional criminality (either culpability or harm) then there ought to be an increase in sentence either...