Issue 296  3rd June 2023

The Council has revised the Totality guideline, following consultation. The Totality guideline sets out the principles for courts to follow when sentencing an offender for more than one offence, or where the offender is already serving a sentence.

Changes in the revised guideline, which will come into force on 1 July 2023, include:

• giving greater prominence to guidance on how the courts can structure the sentence to achieve a just and proportionate outcome
• prompting courts to explain how the sentence is structured for the benefit of offenders, victims and the general public
• adding an explanation of how to approach sentencing offences committed before other offences for which an offender has already been sentenced, and
• bringing the guideline up to date to reflect changes in case law.

The Metropolitan Police will no longer attend 999 calls linked to mental health incidents from September. Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has told health and social care services that officers won't be sent unless there's a threat to life. It's intended to allow police to focus on crime and its victims rather than dealing with people who need expert medical help.

"Where there is an immediate threat to life, officers will continue to respond," the Met Police said. "In the interests of patients and the public, we urgently need to redress the imbalance of responsibility, where police officers are left delivering health responsibilities. Health services must take primacy for caring for the mentally ill, allowing officers to focus on their core responsibilities to prevent and detect crime, and keep communities safe and support victims"...

A Met spokesperson told the BBC that officers spent an average of 10 hours with a patient when they are sectioned under the Mental Health Act. "In London alone, between 500-600 times a month, officers are waiting for this length of time to hand over to patients, and it cannot continue," said a statement. "Police... are not trained to deliver mental health care"...

Bereaved families and eyewitnesses of homicide or major criminal incidents like the Manchester Arena bombing will receive better support than ever thanks to important changes coming into force on Thursday (1 June 2023). The Homicide Service, backed by £5.27 million of government funding, provides essential services and practical support to families bereaved by murder or manslaughter – such as emotional and practical support like transportation as well as trauma and bereavement counselling and help navigating the criminal justice system.

Currently, the service – delivered on behalf of government by charity Victim Support – provides services for people who have been bereaved through murder or manslaughter. But thanks to new measures coming into effect this week – and following a successful pilot in London which expanded the programme to eyewitnesses of homicide these life-changing services will be expanded to provide support to all those who directly witness a homicide or major criminal incident across England and Wales – approximately 1,200 more people...

Thousands more vulnerable women caught up in crime will benefit from drug, housing and employment support to get their lives back on track thanks to a £15 million government funding boost. This investment has been awarded to 40 women’s centres and charities, and four Police and Crime Commissioners to provide or access specialist help to those who commit lower-level offences. These organisations help female offenders to get clean, move away from abusive relationships, and find work and stable accommodation ultimately reducing the £18 billion overall cost of reoffending to the taxpayer...

The Bar Council chair has said he is ‘very uncomfortable’ with efforts to implement a public interest element into lawyers’ professional obligations. Nick Vineall KC said the attempts by the International Bar Association to reconsider its approach were misguided and should be rejected. In a blog on the Bar Council website, Vineall said several leaders of the continental European bars had raised concerns during the IBA’s recent summit in Helsinki at its ongoing project to examine the professional role of lawyers as 'ethical gatekeepers' within wider society...

Vineall said the terminology of ‘gatekeeper’ was ‘to say the least unfortunate’, arguing that this suggested creating ways to close off access to justice. He asked who was to act as the arbiter of the public interest and said there was difficulty in defining which types of work were deemed acceptable and which were not. Writing further on Linkedin, Vineall added: ‘As lawyers we have important duties not to assist in the commission of unlawful activity by our clients. But I am very uncomfortable with the IBA’s suggestion that lawyers ought to be applying some sort of wider public interest test before we decide who to act for, at any rate in contentious matters'...