Sentencing for Assaults on Emergency Workers: Duty to Articulate Uplifts and Focus on Totality – Commentary on R v Jenkins [2025] EWCA Crim 1018

1. Introduction

This commentary examines the decision of the England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) in R v Jenkins [2025] EWCA Crim 1018, a case which addresses:

How sentencing courts should apply and explain the uplift for offences against emergency workers under the Sentencing Council guideline;
The level of scrutiny the Court of Appeal will apply to apparently severe uplifts, especially in lower-category assaults;
The continued centrality of the totality principle and the test of whether a sentence is “manifestly excessive” on appeal;
The importance of clear and reasoned sentencing remarks, particularly where multiple offences and guideline-based uplifts are involved;
The need for accurate recording of convictions where offences are committed for sentence from the magistrates’ court.

Although the Court ultimately refused leave to appeal against an 18‑month custodial sentence, it offered pointed guidance on:

the limits of the uplift that can properly be attributed to the “emergency worker” feature for a Category A2 assault, and
the obligation of judges to explain both the base sentence and the uplifted sentence in open court.

The judgment thus has practical significance for sentencing in cases involving assaults on police and other emergency workers, and for appellate review of sentencing guideline decisions.

2. Factual and Procedural Background

2.1 The offending

The offending took place on 23 March 2025 in Southampton and unfolded across three distinct locations: a public street, a police station, and a hospital. The court had the benefit of CCTV and extensive body‑worn video, which it explicitly relied upon in assessing seriousness.

(a) Incident in the street

Members of the public on London Road, Southampton, saw the applicant, Mr Jenkins, in an altercation with his sister.
They observed him deliver four kicks towards a dog which his sister was holding, giving rise to the charge of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.
He then advanced on his sister and said aggressively, Come on, hit me, I'm not going to hit you first, causing her to fear violence – the basis of the common assault charge.
The Court of Appeal noted it was clear from the footage that he had been drinking or taking drugs.

(b) Police intervention and behaviour at the police station

Police Sergeant (PS) Jack Barnett and Police Constable (PC) Annabelle Terry attended.
Once handcuffed, the applicant became aggressive and struck PS Barnett in the chest.
In attempting to restrain him, PS Barnett suffered an injury when his thumb became trapped in the handcuffs.
The applicant shouted abusive and violent language, including that he wanted to beat the fuck out of his sister.
On the way to, and within, the police station, he continued shouting abuse and obscenities at officers and detention staff, repeatedly using homophobic language (notably faggot), and threatening to smash in PC Terry’s face.
A spit hood had to be fitted due to his behaviour.

(c) Behaviour at the hospital

The applicant later appeared to have injured his forehead by head-butting the cell wall and was taken to Southampton General Hospital.
He remained resistant and abusive, using homophobic and racist terms such as faggot and pakis in an open treatment area, audible to other patients.
Several officers were required to enable treatment.
When PC Terry lowered his spit hood to enable care, he attempted to bite her, and his teeth made contact with her fingers.
Both PS Barnett and PC Terry sought medical attention because they knew the applicant had hepatitis C, greatly increasing the perceived seriousness of the assaultive behaviour.

Back at the police station, the applicant refused to answer questions in interview.

2.2 Proceedings in the magistrates’ court

On 27 March 2025, at Southampton Magistrates’ Court, the applicant pleaded guilty to:

Causing unnecessary suffering to an animal;
Two offences of assaulting an emergency worker by beating (assaults on PS Barnett and PC Terry).

In respect of these three offences, the magistrates’ court did not sentence him but instead committed him for sentence to the Crown Court under section 18 of the Sentencing Act 2020, so that all linked matters could be dealt with together.

2.3 Proceedings in the Crown Court and sentence

On 24 April 2025, at the Crown Court at Southampton, the applicant pleaded guilty to further offences:

Count 1: common assault (relating to his sister);
Count 2: threatening behaviour (as a lesser alternative to an affray count);
Count 5: racially aggravated intentional harassment;
A further offence of using threatening or abusive behaviour which had been sent under a section 51 schedule from the magistrates’ court (i.e. sent for trial but ultimately sentenced with the others).

At the same hearing, he also purported to plead guilty on the indictment to Counts 3 and 4, both being assault on an emergency worker. However, as Mrs Justice May explained, this was a nullity:

He had already pleaded guilty to those assaults at the magistrates’ court.
The proper procedural mechanism was committal for sentence under s.18 Sentencing Act 2020, not fresh pleas on indictment.
The Court of Appeal directed that the record must be amended so that these are correctly recorded as magistrates’ court convictions committed for sentence, and not as convictions on indictment.

2.3.1 The sentences imposed

On 9 May 2025, the Crown Court imposed the following sentences:

Count 3 – assault on an emergency worker: 4 months’ imprisonment;
Count 4 – assault on an emergency worker: 10 months’ imprisonment, consecutive to Count 3;
Count 5 – racially aggravated intentional harassment: 2 months’ imprisonment, consecutive;
Section 51 offence – using insulting/threatening words or behaviour: 2 months’ imprisonment, consecutive;
Count 1 – common assault: 2 months’ imprisonment, concurrent;
Count 2 – threatening behaviour: 2 months’ imprisonment, concurrent;
Committal for sentence – causing unnecessary suffering to an animal: 1 month’s imprisonment, concurrent.

The total sentence was thus an immediate 18 months’ imprisonment, driven solely by the four consecutive terms (4+10+2+2 months). The remaining sentences were concurrent and did not affect the overall term.

The sentencing judge, according to the transcript, spent less than five minutes passing sentence. He made only a brief reference to there being guidelines and did not identify any specific guideline or explain his reasoning count by count.

2.4 The applicant’s background

The applicant was 39 years old at sentence and had a significant criminal record:

24 convictions for 47 offences over many years (the judgment gives the period as January 2007 to August 2004, which appears chronologically inverted but clearly conveys a long history).
These included six offences against the person and 14 public order offences, demonstrating a pattern of violent and abusive conduct.

3. Summary of the Court of Appeal’s Judgment

The Registrar referred the application for leave to appeal against sentence to the full court. The applicant’s counsel, Miss Shelley, focussed on the sentences for the two assaults on emergency workers.

The main points of the Court of Appeal’s decision can be summarised as follows:

Criticism of the sentencing remarks: The sentencing judge’s remarks were too brief and failed to explain:
- which sentencing guidelines were being applied; and
- how the base sentences and subsequent uplifts (for the emergency worker factor) had been calculated.
Guideline range and uplift:
- The assaults on emergency workers were accepted as falling within Category A2 of the relevant Sentencing Council guideline.
- Category A2 has a starting point of a medium level community order, with a custodial range up to 16 weeks (4 months).
- The guideline requires a “significantly more onerous penalty” when the victim is an emergency worker, but the court expressed doubt that a proper uplift would justify moving from a 4‑month top-of-range to an effective 15 months before discount for plea.
Duty to articulate base sentence and uplift: The Court highlighted that the guideline (in bold) instructs sentencers to:

state in open court that the offence was aggravated by reason of the victim being an emergency worker and … what the sentence would have been without that element of aggravation.

The judge had failed to do this.
Overall sentence not manifestly excessive:
- Despite expressing concern about the size of the uplift, the Court’s statutory function was to assess whether the overall 18-month sentence was manifestly excessive.
- Given the seriousness of the conduct (spanning three locations; violent and persistently abusive, including racist and homophobic language; risk caused by hepatitis C; and extensive previous convictions), the Court held that 18 months, though “severe”, was not manifestly excessive.
Some sentences could have been higher or consecutive:
- The Court observed that some of the individual sentences might well have been higher and that others might have been ordered to run consecutively.
- This observation underpinned the refusal to interfere with the aggregate term.
Application refused: The Court of Appeal refused leave to appeal against sentence.
Correction of record: The Court directed that the court record be corrected to show that the emergency worker assaults were convictions following guilty pleas in the magistrates’ court, not convictions on indictment.

4. Detailed Analysis

4.1 The legal framework: assaults on emergency workers

The offences of assaulting an emergency worker were sentenced by reference to the Sentencing Council guideline for such offences. Although the judgment does not recite the entire guideline, it highlights key features:

The guideline classifies offences by culpability and harm, with Category A2 describing a particular combination of seriousness factors.
For Category A2, the starting point is a medium level community order.
The custodial range extends up to 16 weeks (4 months).

Crucially, the guideline recognises that the victim being an emergency worker is an aggravating feature which requires an uplift:

The relevant passage (quoted in substance in the judgment) instructs that the assault should attract a significantly more onerous penalty of the same type, or a more severe type of penalty because of the victim’s role.
The guideline (in bold text) requires the sentencer to:
- state in open court that the offence is aggravated by the victim’s status as an emergency worker; and
- state what the sentence would have been without that element of aggravation.

The applicant did not dispute that Category A2 was the correct categorisation; the debate concerned how far above the guideline range the judge went in the name of the emergency worker uplift.

4.2 The judge’s approach at first instance

The Court of Appeal was plainly dissatisfied with how the sentencing judge approached his task:

He took less than five minutes to sentence on seven separate offences.
He merely observed that there were guidelines, without identifying any, and immediately pronounced sentence.
He gave no explanation of:
- how each offence had been placed within a guideline category;
- what the base sentence (absent the emergency worker factor) was for the two assault counts;
- what specific uplift he was applying for the emergency worker element; or
- how the individual sentences were structured to achieve an appropriate totality.

While brevity is often encouraged to avoid overburdening the court, the Court of Appeal emphasised that brevity must not come at the cost of explanation, especially in complex multi-count sentencing:

Sentencing remarks are encouraged to be brief, but not where brevity comes at the expense of a proper explanation of the sentences passed.

This is a clear reminder that, particularly where sentencing guidelines set out procedural steps (such as separately identifying base sentence and uplift), judges must articulate those steps on the record.

4.3 The Court’s assessment of the uplift for emergency worker status

Although the judge did not spell out his calculations, Miss Shelley for the applicant inferred the following:

The final sentences for assaults on emergency workers were 4 months and 10 months respectively.
Allowing for a typical one-third discount for guilty pleas, these would correspond to notional pre-plea sentences of roughly 6 months and 15 months.

Her submission was that:

Given that Category A2’s custodial range runs only up to 4 months,
A base sentence of 6 months (or more) plus an uplift to 15 months seemed to reflect an excessive upward departure from the guideline.

The Court of Appeal’s reasoning is nuanced:

It accepted that, on the facts and in light of the applicant’s record, going to the top of the guideline range (4 months) for the underlying assault was justified:

We can see why going to the top of the range would have been justified here, given all the aggravating factors...
It accepted that an uplift for emergency worker status could readily push the sentence to 6 months, or even possibly more.
However, the Court was troubled by the suggestion that the uplift alone could justify an increase to 15 months:

We understand that an uplift may account for a rise to six months – possibly even more – but we doubt whether an uplift to the categorisation of an A2 offence would justify more than tripling it to 15 months.

The key point is that the Court saw limits to how far the emergency worker factor can drive the sentence beyond the guideline range for the underlying assault. In other words:

The emergency-worker uplift should be significant,
But it is unlikely to justify an increase that multiplies the top-of-range sentence several times over, at least in a Category A2 case of this type.

However, the Court stopped short of formally recalculating the correct sentence for each assault count, because its statutory task was to assess the justice of the overall Sentencing “package”.

4.4 The Court’s emphasis on the guideline’s procedural requirement

A central aspect of the Court’s reasoning is its reliance on the guideline’s own insistence that sentencers must:

state in open court that the offence was aggravated by reason of the victim being an emergency worker and ... also state what the sentence would have been without that element of aggravation.

This requirement serves several important functions:

Transparency: All parties, the public, and any appellate court can understand how much of the sentence is due to:
- the inherent seriousness of the assault; and
- the specific aggravation arising from the victim being an emergency worker.
Consistency: If judges routinely specify the base sentence and uplift, it becomes easier to ensure that similar cases are treated alike.
Appellate review: It allows the Court of Appeal to assess whether the uplift has been carried too far without having to reconstruct the judge’s reasoning.

In Jenkins, the failure to comply with this requirement meant the Court had to work from inference and approximate calculations. That failure did not, in the end, lead to a reduction of sentence, but it is plainly criticised and should be understood as a warning to future sentencers.

4.5 Totality and the test of “manifestly excessive”

The decisive part of the Court’s reasoning lies in paragraphs 15–17 of the judgment. While the Court was unhappy with aspects of the sentence construction, its core inquiry was:

whether the overall sentence of 18 months' imprisonment was manifestly excessive.

Several features justified upholding the sentence:

Multiple distinct incidents: The offending took place in three separate environments – a busy street, a police station, and a hospital – each involving:
- abusive and aggressive behaviour;
- threats and/or physical violence; and
- distress or risk to different victims and members of the public.
Serious aggravating behaviour:
- Repeated racist and homophobic slurs (faggot, pakis), loudly and persistently.
- Physical assaults and attempts to bite a police officer who knew the applicant had hepatitis C.
- The necessity for multiple officers and medical staff to manage him safely.
- Behaviour fuelled by drink and/or drugs, which the Court treated as aggravating rather than mitigating.
Extensive relevant previous convictions:
- History of violence and public order offending, showing a pattern of similar conduct.
- This substantially reduced the weight of mitigation available to him.
Limited mitigation:
- The only significant mitigation was his guilty pleas.
- The Court described the mitigation as slight when set against the aggravating factors.

Moreover, the Court emphasised that the sentencing judge could legitimately have adopted a more severe structure:

Some of the individual sentences might well have been higher. Others might have been ordered to run consecutively, rather than concurrently.

This is a classic application of the totality principle and the appellate standard:

The Court does not ask itself what sentence it would have passed in the first instance.
It asks whether the sentence actually imposed is so high as to be “manifestly excessive” or wrong in principle.
Where a sentence is severe but still within the band of reasonable judicial responses to the overall criminality, the Court will not interfere, even if it might have structured the sentence differently.

In Jenkins, the Court concluded that 18 months’ imprisonment was severe but not manifestly excessive, and therefore did not justify appellate intervention.

4.6 Correction of the court record: nullity of duplicate pleas

A more technical but significant point concerns the status of the guilty pleas to Counts 3 and 4 (assaults on emergency workers) in the Crown Court.

The applicant had already pleaded guilty to those offences in the magistrates’ court.
They were properly before the Crown Court only as committals for sentence under s.18 Sentencing Act 2020.
Fresh guilty pleas on indictment in respect of those same incidents were therefore a nullity.
The Court directed that the record be amended to reflect that they were magistrates’ court convictions, not convictions on indictment.

This clarification matters for several reasons:

Accuracy of criminal records: It ensures the defendant’s record correctly shows where and how he was convicted, which can affect future sentencing and legal analysis.
Procedural propriety: It reinforces the correct use of the committal-for-sentence procedure under s.18, avoiding the confusion of duplicate convictions.
Doctrinal clarity: Recognising that such “duplicate pleas” are a nullity avoids problems around double-counting or potential arguments about double jeopardy.

5. Precedents and Authorities

The judgment in Jenkins is unusual in that it does not expressly cite any earlier case law. Instead, its reasoning relies primarily on:

The Sentencing Council guideline for assaults on emergency workers;
Established but uncited principles of appellate review:
- the totality principle; and
- the requirement that a sentence be manifestly excessive or wrong in principle before the Court of Appeal will interfere;
The statutory framework of the Sentencing Act 2020, especially s.18 (committal for sentence).

While no specific authorities are named, the judgment clearly operates within, and reaffirms, the long‑established appellate approach:

Appeal courts do not micro‑manage every guideline step unless the error has produced an unjust global result.
They instead focus on whether, looking at the sentence as a whole, it falls outside the proper range for the overall criminality.

In this sense, Jenkins does not create radically new doctrine but:

clarifies and emphasises aspects of the Sentencing Council guideline on emergency worker assaults; and
provides concrete appellate-level guidance on the level of uplift and the need for articulated reasoning.

6. Complex Concepts Explained (for non-specialists)

6.1 Committal for sentence (section 18 Sentencing Act 2020)

Sometimes a defendant pleads guilty to offences in the magistrates’ court but is sent to the Crown Court for sentence because:

The magistrates think their sentencing powers might be insufficient; or
There are other related offences already proceeding in the Crown Court.

Under s.18 Sentencing Act 2020, the Crown Court then sentences those offences as if it were the court of trial. However, the convictions remain magistrates’ court convictions; the Crown Court is only dealing with sentence.

6.2 Section 51 schedule offences

A reference to a “section 51 schedule” typically reflects the procedure whereby certain either-way offences are sent for trial to the Crown Court (formerly under section 51 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998), and then appear on a schedule to the indictment so they can be sentenced together. In this case, the offence of using threatening or abusive behaviour was such a “sent” offence.

6.3 Category A2 and guideline ranges

The Sentencing Council guideline divides offences into categories based on:

Harm – the level of injury or risk caused; and
Culpability – how blameworthy the offender’s conduct was.

A particular combination yields a category (here, A2) with:

a starting point (the sentence for a typical case of that category); and
a range (within which more or less serious examples should usually fall).

For Category A2 assault on an emergency worker:

Starting point: medium level community order;
Range: up to 16 weeks’ custody (4 months).

Judges can move above the range where there are particularly serious aggravating factors, but should explain why.

6.4 Uplift for emergency worker status

Where an offence is committed against a police officer, paramedic, firefighter, or other defined emergency worker, Parliament and the Sentencing Council expect a more severe sentence than would be imposed if the victim were a member of the public. This added element is known as an “uplift”.

The proper method is:

Identify the base sentence that would apply if the victim were not an emergency worker, by following the usual guideline steps;
Then impose a more onerous penalty to reflect the emergency worker factor – either a higher sentence of the same type (e.g., a longer custodial term) or moving to a more severe type (e.g., from community order to custody);
Explain both figures in open court.

6.5 Concurrent and consecutive sentences

Concurrent sentences run at the same time; the defendant serves only the longest of them.
Consecutive sentences are added one after another; the terms are stacked.

In Jenkins:

The four most serious offences were ordered to run consecutively, building the total to 18 months.
The other three offences were made concurrent and therefore did not increase the total term.

6.6 Totality

The totality principle requires judges to look at the overall sentence for multiple offences and ensure it is just and proportionate:

Even if each individual sentence is appropriate for its offence, adding them all consecutively may produce an overall term that is too harsh.
Judges therefore adjust the pattern of concurrency and consecutivity to reach a fair total.

6.7 Manifestly excessive

On an appeal against sentence, the Court of Appeal will only interfere if:

the sentence is wrong in principle (for example, applying the wrong maximum), or
the sentence is “manifestly excessive” – so high that no reasonable judge could have imposed it for the offending in question.

The Court does not reduce a sentence just because it might have chosen a slightly lower term itself; the threshold for intervention is significantly higher.

6.8 Nullity

A legal act may sometimes be described as a “nullity”. This means it has no legal effect at all, as if it had never occurred. In this case:

The guilty pleas entered on indictment in the Crown Court to the emergency worker assaults were nullities, because the only valid convictions for those offences were the earlier guilty pleas in the magistrates’ court.

7. Likely Impact and Practical Implications

7.1 For sentencing judges

The case of Jenkins is a clear reminder that judges sentencing assaults on emergency workers must:

Identify and apply the correct Sentencing Council guideline (here, the emergency worker assault guideline);
Place the case within the appropriate category (e.g., A2) and work from the starting point and range;
Determine a base sentence for the assault, excluding the emergency worker factor;
Apply a significant but proportionate uplift for the victim’s status;
State explicitly in open court:
- that the offence is aggravated by the victim being an emergency worker; and
- what the sentence would have been without that aggravation.
Provide sentencing remarks that, while efficient, are sufficiently detailed to show how each sentence was derived and how the totality was addressed.

7.2 For defence and prosecution advocates

Advocates can draw several lessons:

Calibration of uplift: Defence counsel can use Jenkins to argue that:
- while an uplift is required,
- it should not ordinarily result in a multiple-fold increase over the top of the guideline range for the underlying assault, particularly in Category A2 cases.
Requirement for sentencing explanation: Advocates may properly invite the judge to:
- state the base sentence and uplift separately; and
- record how totality has been addressed;
failing which the sentence may be more vulnerable to challenge (even if, as in Jenkins, not ultimately reduced).
Appeal strategy: When considering an appeal:
- It is not enough to show that guideline steps were imperfectly followed;
- Counsel must show that the overall sentence is outside the proper range – i.e., manifestly excessive.

7.3 For future cases involving emergency workers

The judgment underscores the serious view taken of violence and abuse directed at emergency workers, especially where:

the behaviour is sustained over time and across multiple locations;
there is a combination of physical violence, threats, racist and homophobic language;
the offenders have significant prior histories of similar conduct;
there are additional risks (here, the applicant’s hepatitis C status and attempted bite).

While the Court indicated that the emergency worker uplift should have reasonable limits, it also signalled that robust aggregate sentences can be justified for such persistent, multi‑venue offending.

7.4 For court administration and recording

The Court’s insistence on correcting the record in relation to the emergency worker assaults highlights the importance of:

Ensuring offences committed for sentence under s.18 are correctly recorded as magistrates’ court convictions;
Avoiding parallel “convictions” on indictment where the defendant has already been convicted in the magistrates’ court;
Maintaining an accurate and procedurally sound record, both for the fairness of the individual defendant and for the integrity of the criminal justice system.

8. Conclusion

R v Jenkins [2025] EWCA Crim 1018 is a significant appellate decision not because it reshapes the law from first principles, but because it:

Reinforces the proper application of the Sentencing Council guideline on assaults on emergency workers, with particular emphasis on:
- the need to articulate a clear base sentence; and
- a distinct, reasoned uplift for the emergency worker factor.
Signals caution about allowing the emergency worker uplift to propel a Category A2 assault sentence to a level many times higher than the guideline’s top-of-range, without compelling justification.
Stresses the importance of sentencing remarks that, while succinct, must be sufficiently detailed to allow the parties and the appellate court to follow the judge’s reasoning.
Reaffirms the primacy of totality and the test of whether a sentence is manifestly excessive; even where aspects of the sentence construction are open to criticism, the Court will not interfere if the overall term is within the permissible range.
Clarifies procedural correctness in dealing with offences committed for sentence and the nullity of duplicate guilty pleas on indictment where convictions already exist in the magistrates’ court.

For practitioners, Jenkins will serve as a valuable authority in two main respects:

As a benchmark for what may (and may not) be an acceptable uplift for assaults on emergency workers in lower guideline categories; and
As a reminder and lever to ensure that sentencing judges comply with guideline requirements to explain their reasoning, especially in multi‑offence cases where aggregate sentences can quickly become severe.

Although the applicant’s sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment was upheld, the judgment delivers clear, structured guidance that will shape the way courts approach sentencing for assaults on emergency workers and the transparency demanded of sentencing decisions in this important area.