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
'Boris Johnson to boost jails in law and order election pledge'
The prime minister is expected to announce a renewed prison-building programme after concerns that previous plans to increase capacity by 10,000 places before 2020 have stalled. During the Tory leadership campaign Mr Johnson also committed to keeping serious sexual and violent offenders behind bars for longer, calling it wrong that they were routinely released after half of their sentence.
The Times has also been told that the Crown Prosecution Service will make an announcement about increasing the number of rape prosecutions, which have fallen to their lowest for more than five years. The number fell from 11,311 in 2017 to 7,594 last year despite a huge increase in recorded sex offences. Prosecutions for all offences have also hit a 50-year low despite rises in the crime rate.
Public Confidence in Sentencing Report
We have published a report of research carried out to help the Council better understand public attitudes towards, and understanding of, sentencing and the criminal justice system. Public confidence is fundamental to the operation of the criminal justice system. The Sentencing Council has a statutory duty to have regard to the need to promote public confidence in the system when developing the sentencing guidelines and monitoring their impact. To meet this obligation, the Council must have a clear and detailed picture of the public’s knowledge and understanding of, and confidence in, sentencing and sentencing guidelines, set against wider attitudes towards the whole criminal justice system.
The report can be read here.
'Sharp rise in women caught carrying knives'
Knife possession offences involving women in England have increased steeply since 2014 - rising by at least 10% every year, police figures show. Some 1,509 offences were recorded in 2018 - an increase of 73% over the last five years - data obtained following freedom of information requests shows.
It comes against a backdrop of rising knife crime nationally and after the number of fatal stabbings in England and Wales was last year the highest number since records began.
'MoJ questionnaire on unused material'
Some of you will have received a request from the MoJ in the past week asking you to complete a questionnaire on unused material. This is part of an ‘Accelerated Work’ stream arising out of the Criminal Legal Aid Review (CLAR) that has been agreed with the main solicitor representative groups and the Bar Council.
The purpose of the data collection exercise is to allow the MoJ to understand and analyse the amount of unused material in cases, what work it entails for practitioners and whether there are any patterns to the types of cases that include more unused material.
Cases
Le Brocq v The Liverpool Crown Court [2019] EWCA Crim 1398
This is an appeal against a wasted costs order made by His Honour Judge Wright on 9 July 2018 in the Crown Court at Liverpool against Mark Le Brocq, a barrister who had appeared as defence counsel in a trial which came to an end on 26 April 2018. It concerned a nine-count indictment alleging sexual offences against a single child complainant. The judge discharged the jury following Mr Le Brocq's closing speech. He took the view that comments made in that speech had compromised the fairness of the trial. A retrial was ordered at which the defendant was acquitted.
We have concluded that the circumstances which confronted the judge after counsel's closing speech fell a very long way short of justifying the discharge of the jury... For these reasons we conclude that the wasted costs order must be revoked.
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