In terms of the scope of research we've done thus far on sentencing where a crime involves an older adult victim, I can't speak to specific length of sentencing right now. What I would say is that actually we found that the age of the victim was rarely mentioned in terms of decisions about appropriate sentencing.
That was the biggest surprise for us. We expected to see more cases where there were older victims. There was a discussion about what might be the appropriate sentence if there were aggravating factors given the advanced age of the victim, but we actually found very few reported criminal court decisions where age of the victim was considered significantly relevant.
Most often we saw it with B and E cases; I guess those would be assaults. Breaking-and-entering cases where offenders were targeting neighbourhoods where it was known that there were older adults living alone in those communities--that was the most common situation where it came up. I don't even recall a case where it came up in a domestic violence context.