The general approach when setting a minimum period to be served on a life sentence, for offences other than murder, was to first to decide the determinate sentence which would have been imposed if the imposition of a life sentence had not been required, and then to fix the specified period to be served at half the determinate that would have been passed, unless there were particular circumstances which made it appropriate to have made the period longer.

CA (Crim Div) (Brian Smedley J, Penry-Davey J)

01/10/1998