15 during 2003, inter alia prohibits the sentence of life imprisonment for children who commit offences whilst under the age of 18. [22] This background reinforces the interpretation given to s51(3)(b) above. If the notional starting point for the category of offender envisaged in ss3(b) is that the minimum prescribed sentence is applicable, as the majority in the court a quo and the full bench in Makwetsja suggest, then imprisonment (the prescribed sentence) would be the first resort for children aged 16 and 17 years in respect of offences covered by the Act instead of the last resort. It is true that the full court in Makwetsja emphasised that on its interpretation the legislature sought to make ‘doubly certain’ that the sentencing court found the prescribed minimum sentence appropriate, and suggested that a court would ‘readily’ conclude that the youth of an offender between 16 and 18 was in itself a substantial and compelling circumstance (para 47). Nevertheless, on the approach of the majority in the court a quo and of the Transvaal Provincial Division in Makwetsja, a sentencing court would be unable to depart from the statutorily prescribed minimum unless the child offender establishes the existence of substantial and compelling circumstances. To this extent the offender under 18 would be burdened in the same way as an offender over 18. This would infringe the principle that imprisonment as a sentencing option should be used for child offenders as a last resort and only for the shortest appropriate