About
A free weekly collection of criminal law links - for practitioners, law students, and anyone with an interest in the criminal justice system of England and Wales.
Curated by Sam Willis, a barrister at 5 King's Bench Walk.
News
'Prison reforms will cut reoffending and put worst offenders behind bars for longer'
A fundamental shake-up of the justice system that takes dangerous offenders off the streets for longer while rehabilitating lower risk offenders has been outlined today by Lord Chancellor Alex Chalk...
In order to end the merry-go-round of reoffending the government will legislate that there should be a presumption against prison sentences of less than 12 months...
The Lord Chancellor also announced a doubling of the number of GPS tags available to the courts to help them manage offenders in the community...
Judges and magistrates will still be able to send offenders to prison for less than 12 months if deemed appropriate, such as prolific repeat offenders, as well as anyone unwilling to obey the strict requirements of the sentence – such as breaking curfews, cutting off a GPS tag or breaching a court order to clean up the neighbourhoods they’ve damaged...
Further reforms that were outlined today include:
- Stepping up work to remove thousands of foreign prisoners by deporting them earlier and agreeing more transfer agreements with other countries
- Legislating to allow prisoners to be held in overseas prisons
- Reviewing the incentives around early guilty pleas, to save the courts time and spare victims the ordeal of giving evidence in court
- Looking at options to tackle the injustice of the now abolished Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence and how the licence period could be reduced to restore greater proportionality to the IPP sentence..
The Lord Chancellor confirmed that in order make sure we have the prison places we need to lock up the most dangerous offenders and to ensure safety in the prison estate, he has agreed to use an existing power to allow the prison service to move some less serious offenders on to licence a few days before their automatic release point...
'Nitrous oxide: Laughing gas possession to be illegal in three weeks'
Possessing laughing gas will be made illegal in three weeks, with those who repeatedly misuse the drug facing up to two years in prison. And dealers of nitrous oxide will face up to 14 years behind bars, the Home Office said. The ban will come into force on November 8, and will make nitrous oxide a controlled Class C drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. It is one of the most commonly used recreational drugs among young people. It comes after MPs voted overwhelmingly to have it categorised as a class C drug, by 404 votes to 36, last month...
'Baroness Newlove appointed interim victims' commissioner'
A former victims' commissioner is returning to the role on an interim basis – a year after Dame Vera Baird stepped down and accused the government of 'downgrading' victims' interests. The Ministry of Justice today announced that community reform campaigner Baroness Newlove, who was commissioner between 2013 and 2019, has been reappointed for a year while the government embarks on a fresh recruitment campaign for a permanent office-holder.
Dame Vera Baird, who succeeded Newlove in 2019, confirmed her departure last September in a scathing letter which said little had been done to effectively tackle the 'enormous and catastrophic’ court backlog and that it was ‘no exaggeration to say that the criminal justice system is in chaos'. The ministry said the decision to appoint a temporary commissioner was made to enable a new recruitment campaign to better reflect the new responsibilities the role will have once the Victims and Prisoners Bill is passed...
'BPS calls for better psychological support for jurors exposed to distressing evidence during jury service'
Following a number of high-profile cases, with juries hearing harrowing evidence over a period of months, the BPS is concerned that jurors are going without psychological support and being ‘dropped’ at the end of their service. Jurors, who are often exposed to material that could result in vicarious trauma, are currently signposted to their GP to access NHS Talking Therapies and the Samaritans, should they experience distress or mental health difficulties following their jury service. The BPS is urging the government to provide better psychological support for jurors, at the very least when cases meet a certain threshold for the type of case and the evidence jurors are expected to consider...
Cases
R v Foster [2023] EWCA Crim 1196
On 6 March 2023, at the Crown Court sitting at Stoke on Trent, Carla Foster pleaded guilty to administering poison with intent to procure her own miscarriage, contrary to section 58 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 (count 2 on the indictment). On 12th June 2023, for that offence she was sentenced at the same court to 28 months’ imprisonment...
... Though the offence itself was a serious one, and crossed the custody threshold, this was, as we said at the hearing of this appeal, a very sad case that called for compassion, not punishment. And it was one where no useful purpose was served by detaining Ms Foster in custody. After assessing harm and culpability, our provisional starting point was one of three years imprisonment, which was reduced to one of 18 months having regard to mitigation, and then to one of 14 months after giving Ms Foster 20 per cent credit for her plea. The length of this sentence meant it could be suspended and we considered that it should be suspended. We have already referred to the exceptionally strong mitigation. Rehabilitation had already been achieved. Ms Foster presented no risk to her family or the wider public, and there was no prospect of a repetition of this offence...
International
'Cybercrimes under consideration by the ICC'
International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor, Karim Khan, has announced that the ICC is considering the scope for investigating cybercrimes that violate the Rome Statute. ‘Digital front lines can give rise to damage and suffering comparable to what the founders of the ICC sought to prevent’, Khan says in an article published in Foreign Policy magazine. ‘Cyber warfare does not play out in the abstract. Rather, it can have a profound impact on people’s lives.’ While the Rome Statute does not specifically mention cybercrime, Khan emphasises that such crimes might meet the elements of core international crimes as they already have been defined. A policy paper on cybercrimes, the first focus of his Office at this stage, should provide insight into such debates...
Other
'Focus on fairness – prosecuting crime in a changing world'
There have been a myriad challenges of the past few years, but it has been a privilege – and overwhelmingly a pleasure – to serve as Director of Public Prosecutions. And tonight I am grateful to the League and this firm for the opportunity to reflect on my tenure, the theme of which is fairness – which I have endeavoured to make central to my time as DPP. Because at the CPS, our aim is to deliver justice. And justice, by definition, demands fairness – in fact, in its most simple definition, justice is the quality of being fair and reasonable. And so our justice system must have fairness at its heart. I am going to start this evening by exploring why I believe the Crown Prosecution Service – an independent, objective, and national prosecution authority – is so crucial for the fairness of our whole criminal justice system, before moving on to consider that fairness through three lenses...