The Council has published research looking at the Totality guideline and how it is being used by sentencers. The research explores how useful judges and magistrates find the guideline, how easy it is to apply and where sentencers would like to see changes.

The Totality guideline is applied by the courts when sentencing an offender either for multiple offences or when they are already serving a sentence. The research was designed to find out how the guideline is working in practice and was carried out using a survey and a series of interviews with sentencers.