If your sentences are concurrent, it means you will serve them at the same time. For example, if you get one 6-month sentence and one 3-month sentence, the total sentence will be 6 months. This is because you will serve the 3-month sentence 'at the same time' as the 6-month sentence.
Blogger: this has become the norm. When you are in the system as I was, ten years a Magistrate and Chairman and Magistrate Qualified To Sit As A Judge in Crown Court, you begin to get used to it all.
You start forgetting to take a long hard look at the system and you are drawn into accepting these absurdities as the norm.
Well, I retired after just ten years unable to take the 'absurdities' any longer. The system has become half as bad again over the years of my retirement.
Concurrent sentencing is nothing less than an abomination and a scam. You can be found guilty of twenty crimes deemed to be each worth three months custody and you will be sentenced to three months concurrent. ie) You will serve twelve weeks in total - the only problem is that you'll normally then tend to be released in six if there is the slenderest evidence of 'good behaviour' in prison.
Dear readers - did you know all of this? - Well, VERY few seem to. However, it gets even worse.
The principle of 'totality' lurks in the background too. Where there is a bevy of crimes committed - magistrates and judges are expected to take a benevolent overview. If concurrent sentences do not ensure that the punishment is completely inappropriate to the crime - then 'totality' will.
Great system, innit? - (But only for criminals and never for the longsuffering public.)
