If someone robs a bank and gets away with £10 then gets arrested

and if someone robs the same bank but takes £250,000?

Would they both get the same sentence or different?

If they did it in the same way, with the same ammount of violence / weponary etc... then i belive it would be the same !!

Strange question why do you ask ??

Phill

if they did the same crime but sat before different judges would they get the same sentance :rolleyes:

Tiggs

They'd prolly just get a slap on the wrist and told not to do it again... the getaway driver however is more like to be banged up in solitary for 50 years for illegal parking and speeding:rolleyes:

It seems to me that punishment is set more by fashion than the seriousness (sp?) of the crime[img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

Bob

No - the bank robbers would get off scot free as the police have far better things to do with their time - I mean, there are people driving on the roads at 32mph in a 30mph zone! There are others blatantly using non-regulation number plates as well!

If anyone did get arrested for the bank robbery job, it would be the pedestrian coming out of Woolies at just the wrong time and the charge would either be Aiding and Abetting or Perverting the Cause of Justice by not leaping in front of the getaway car and shouting "Stop!"

Unless the getaway car had a non-regulation number plate, of course...

I heard on the radio today that a Canadian prisoner in a US jail who is doing time for bank robbery is asking for his sentence to be reduced because Canadian dollars are worth less than US dollars :confused:

It's just to settle an office argument :)

I'm not a bank robber.

Damn, beaten to it...

If the crown prosecution service gets your address wrong.....
you walk........:D :D Egg cell entie!
Wasnt a bank tho ;)

rik,
AFAIK, it's not a question you can give a yes/no answer to. They are both the same offence but the sentencing guidelines will give magistrates/judges some latitude. So, they could get exactly the same sentence but that's unlikely. It might depend on the area and what the local "bench" feel about that sort of offence etc. If there's a lot of that crime about they might go for a harsher sentence. At the end of the day, my money would be on the greater amount of money attracting the bigger sentence.

A lot would depend on whether the money was recovered.

I was doing an MD in armed robbery.

Assuming identical modus operandi (committed the crime thw same way) then the potential sentence is the same.

IN reallity the cash amount is a lottery and it is the act that is punished.

However if a large some is stolen and not recovered.........i.e. a nice nest egg for the villain then the sentence is likely to be at the top end e.g. 14 years.

I once interviewed a guy who was sent down for 8 years having failed to rob a Nation Wide Anglia with a bannana in a carrier bag.

He had "done them" several times before for tiny amounts and was completely mad! judge was not impressed and sent him down rather than to hospital :(

The amount stolen is one factor in determining sentence, but nowhere near as important a factor as the amount of violence used, the type of weapons used, whether they were loaded/effective etc, the amount of planning and previous convictions. An armed robbery with a knife that netted £250,000 (if there could be such a thing) would get a stiffer sentence than one for £10. Also, there is likely to be a greater degree of planning to robbing the higher amount, thus increasing the sentence.

Other factors such as plea, location and institution robbed will be factors to be considered.

Maz.