Issue 184  13th March 2021

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

New laws to reform sentencing, the courts and offender management:

• Whole life Orders for the premeditated murder of a child as well as allowing judges to hand out this maximum punishment to 18 to 20-year olds in exceptional cases to reflect the gravity of a crime. For example, acts of terrorism which lead to mass loss of life.
• New powers to halt the automatic early release of offenders who pose a danger to the public.
• For children who commit murder, introducing new starting points for deciding the minimum amount of time in custody based on age and seriousness of offence, and reducing the opportunities for over 18s who committed murder as a child to have their minimum term reviewed.
• Ending the halfway release of offenders sentenced to between four and seven years in prison for serious violent and sexual offences such as rape, manslaughter and GBH with intent. Instead they will have to spend two-thirds of their time behind bars.
• Changing the threshold for passing a sentence below the minimum term for repeat offenders, including key serious offences such as ‘third strike’ burglary which carries a minimum three-year custodial sentence and ‘two strike’ knife possession which has a minimum 6-month sentence for adults, making it less likely that a court will depart from theses minimum terms.
• Reforming criminal records disclosure to reduce the time period people have to declare previous non-violent, sexual or terrorist convictions to employers – covering both adult and youth offences. Introducing life sentences for killer drivers.
• Tougher community sentences which double the amount of time offenders can be subject to curfew restrictions to 2 years.
• Extended ‘positions of trusts’ laws to protect teenagers from abuse by making it illegal for sports coaches and religious leaders from engaging in sexual activity with 16 and 17-year-olds.
• New rules to end the need for participants to travel unnecessarily to court by allowing criminal courts to maximise the use of video and audio technology as it develops.
• Enshrining open justice principles by allowing for remote observers – using video and audio technology – across the vast majority of our courts and tribunals improving public access and transparency.
• For the first time enabling profoundly deaf people to sit on juries. Current laws ban the presence of a ‘stranger’ being in the jury deliberation room – this will be scrapped and instead allow a British Sign Language Interpreter into the room.
• Increasing the maximum penalty for criminal damage of a memorial from 3 months to 10 years. Stronger youth community sentencing options, including greater use of location monitoring and longer daily curfews, providing robust alternatives to custody.

New protections and powers for the police include:

• Serious Violence Reduction Orders – new stop and search powers against convicted knife offensive weapons offenders designed to ensure offenders are steered away from crime and if they persist in carrying a knife or an offensive weapon, that they are more likely to be caught and put in prison.
• A legal duty on local authorities, the police, criminal justice agencies, health and fire and rescue services to tackle serious violence through sharing data and intelligence.
• Homicide reviews following deaths of adults involving offensive weapons to better understand the drivers of violent crime and stop it happening in the first place.
• Enshrining the police covenant in law.
• Doubling the maximum sentence for assaulting an emergency worker from 12 months to 2 years.
• A new law to allow police to obtain a search warrant for evidence related to the location of human remains where it is not possible to bring about a prosecution, for example where a suspect is dead, unfit to plead, or has already been convicted of the offence in the absence of a body
• Strengthen police powers to tackle non-violent protests that have a significant disruptive effect on the public or on access to Parliament;
• Reform pre-charge bail to better protect vulnerable victims and witnesses. Known as Kay’s Law this will put victims of crime at the heart of police decision making and support the timely progression of investigations.
• Strengthen police powers to tackle unauthorised encampments that significant interfere with a person’s or community’s ability to make use of the land

The text of the Bill can be found here.

'Judges will be allowed to retire at 75'

Judges, magistrates and coroners will be allowed to work up until the age of 75, the government announced today. The current standard mandatory retirement age of 70 dates from 1993. The Ministry of Justice said the change seeks to address the fact that people now work later into their lives and the government did not want to lose valued members of the judiciary.

'New major interventions to block encrypted communications of criminal networks'

Judicial and law enforcement authorities in Belgium, France and the Netherlands have in close cooperation enabled major interventions to block the further use of encrypted communications by large-scale organised crime groups (OCGs), with the support of Europol and Eurojust. The continuous monitoring of the illegal Sky ECC communication service tool by investigators in the three countries involved has provided invaluable insights into hundreds of millions of messages exchanged between criminals. This has resulted in the collection of crucial information on over a hundred of planned large-scale criminal operations, preventing potential life threatening situations and possible victims...

As of mid-February, authorities have been able to monitor the information flow of approximately 70 000 users of Sky ECC. Many users of EncroChat changed over to the popular Sky ECC platform, after EncroChat was unveiled in 2020.

'Domestic abusers to get GPS tags on release from jail in London'

Domestic abuse offenders who have served a prison sentence will be tagged with a GPS tracking device in London under new a pilot project. Up to 200 perpetrators of abuse-related offences, such as stalking, harassment, physical abuse, sexual abuse and coercive control will be fitted with the devices from Tuesday as part of their release conditions. The pilot, which is running across every London borough as part of a programme announced by the London mayor’s office, has been launched in collaboration with probation services after consultation with the Violence Against Women and Girls initiative.

Katie Nash, head of public protection for the National Probation Service (London division), said the pilot would provide an opportunity to use technology to improve the management of the risk posed to past, current and future partners and children. “The GPS tags will be an integral part of risk management plans as they enable us to monitor compliance with licence conditions to improve victim safety,” she said.

'Ministry of Justice to review laws that see domestic abuse victims get disproportionately high sentences for acting in self-defence'

The Victims’ Commissioner and Domestic Abuse Commissioner have welcomed Ministry of Justice moves to review sentencing laws for women who use weapons against abusers in self-defence. The Lord Chancellor, Robert Buckland, has said he has asked his officials to review sentencing laws, following joint calls from the Victims’ Commissioner and Domestic Abuse Commissioner in their letter to Ministers on International Women’s Day.

Appearing on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, the Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland said: “For a lot of women in abusive relationships when perhaps with a stronger male partner, very often to defend themselves or to get out of a dangerous situation they have to arm themselves with some sort of weapon. There is a real worry that women are getting disproportionately high sentences as a result of it. So there are conflicting and quite clearly competing arguments here. So what I want to do is to have a much more careful look at this, a review of this first of all with my officials to see what changes, if any, should be made because it will affect the way we deal with the sentencing law of murder. This would be quite a profound change if it was to come about and I want to make sure we get the balance right and avoid unintended consequences of the law that is a peril in this area.”