R v Jamaal Bakare

The appellant appeals, with leave granted by the single judge, against the sentence imposed on him on 24 September 2025 in the Crown Court at Kingston-upon-Thames for two offences to which he had pleaded guilty in the Wimbledon Magistrates' Court on 1 August 2025. For an offence of possessing a controlled drug of class C (nitrous oxide for wrongful inhalation) with intent to supply, contrary to section 5(3) of, and Schedule 4(2) to, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the appellant was sentenced to a community order for 24 months, with a rehabilitation activity requirement of 15 days and an unpaid work requirement of 175 hours, and he was fined £2,000. In addition, a deprivation order was made in respect of the £390 found on the appellant. No separate penalty was imposed for an offence of possessing a controlled drug of class B (cannabis), contrary to section 5(2) of, and Schedule 4(2) to, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

On 17 November 2024 police officers stopped the appellant as he drove along a street in Wimbledon. They found a snap bag of cannabis in the glovebox, 78 large nitrous oxide canisters within boxes in the boot and £390 in the appellant's pocket. Examination of his telephone revealed messages relating to the supply of class B and class C drugs at street level.

The appellant was 20 when he committed these offences and 21 when he was sentenced. He was in his third year of a degree in marketing at Nottingham University. He had previously been convicted of an offence committed in 2023 of driving a motor vehicle with a proportion of specified controlled drug above the specified limit. He pleaded guilty in the Magistrates' Court on 20 May 2025 to a similar offence committed on 17 November 2024, ie at the same time as these offences, together with an offence of using a motor vehicle on a road or public place without third party insurance. For those offences he was fined £120 and disqualified from driving for 36 months.

The pre-sentence report recommended a community order for 18 to 24 months, with a rehabilitation requirement of 15 days and an unpaid work requirement of 80 to 150 hours.

In relation to the sentencing guidelines, the Crown submitted that the appellant played a lesser role in a case of category 3 harm, which gave a starting point of a high-level community order and a range from a low-level community order to 12 weeks' custody.

In passing sentence, the judge did not explain why he considered it appropriate to impose a fine, but he subsequently said as follows in a comment on the digital case system:

We note also that the judge did not specify what the sentence would have been but for the appellant's guilty plea.

We are very grateful to Ms McLean for her clear and attractive written and oral submissions.

The grounds of appeal are that the sentence was manifestly excessive because it: (i) relied on a starting point which did not reflect the mitigating factors; (ii) imposed two punitive elements upon the appellant which in combination represented an excessive penalty for the offending; and (iii) did not reflect the appellant's early guilty plea.

It is submitted that there were a number of mitigating factors, namely: the appellant's youth; his limited previous convictions; his prospects in work and education, in that he had achieved a 2:1 grade in both his first and second year in his degree and had demonstrated a willingness to apply these skills to a business; his supply of a drug to which he was addicted; his understanding of the seriousness of his offending; and his desire not to offend again. It is also submitted that these mitigating factors, and in particular his youth, should have resulted in a downward adjustment from the starting point of a high-level community order. It is further submitted that the judge did not refer to any of these mitigating factors in his sentencing remarks.

In fact, as we have said, the judge did refer to the fact that the appellant was in his third year at university. Moreover, although the judge did not expressly refer to the appellant's level of maturity, it is clear that he regarded the appellant as mature, since he was running two businesses, ie his clothing business and his drugs business. Moreover, the judge expressly stated that the appellant clearly understood the seriousness of his position.

As we have said, the starting point was a high-level community order. Section 6 of the sentencing guideline on Imposition of Community and Custodial Sentences states, in relation to such an order, that:

We note that the guideline then states as follows:

Thus, it will be seen that a fine can be imposed together with a community order, but the presumption is that a fine will only be imposed in addition to a community order if the community order does not contain a requirement for the purposes of punishment. In this case the community order did include a requirement for the purposes of punishment, namely the unpaid work requirement. The judge did not in his sentencing remarks explain why he considered it appropriate to impose a fine in addition to the unpaid work requirement and we consider that it was wrong in principle to impose a fine in addition to an unpaid work requirement without identifying good reasons for taking that exceptional course.

The judge's subsequent comment on the digital case system did not justify the imposition of a fine. The mere fact that a defendant has money is not a good or sufficient reason for imposing a fine. Moreover, the value of the drugs in a case such as this cannot be treated as an asset belonging to the defendant, since the drugs had been seized and will be destroyed. Likewise the £390 found on the appellant could not be treated as an asset, since it had been seized and was a subject of a deprivation order. Consequently, we allow the appeal on ground 2 and we quash the fine.

In relation to grounds 1 and 3, we were invited to reduce the unpaid work requirement to reflect the mitigating factors and the appellant's guilty plea. Other judges might have imposed a lower requirement, but we note that 175 hours was less than two-thirds of the maximum requirement which could have been imposed (ie 300 hours) and was only 25 hours more than the maximum recommended in the pre-sentence report.

In all the circumstances, we do not consider that the unpaid work requirement was either manifestly excessive or wrong in principle. We dismiss the appeal against the community order.