News
Online Sentencing Guidelines for Crown Court
From today, sentencing guidelines used in the Crown Court are available online for judges, legal practitioners and other visitors to the Sentencing Council website.
The launch of the Crown Court guidelines online marks the latest step in the Council’s programme to deliver guidelines in a digital format that is immediately accessible, quick and easy to use, and designed to support the ways in which Judges, Magistrates and other users work.
The guidelines can be accessed here.
Victim Liaison Units: Report on Letters Sent
Inspectors assessed the quality of letters sent and found that in 24% of cases the quality was of the standard expected. Some of the letters contained simple mistakes that could have been picked up in proof-reading, occasionally incorrect names were used, and in some letters inspectors even found that incorrect cases were identified. However the single most common problem was that too many letters did not contain any level of empathy, they were often cold and factual, and in many instances a template was used and often was not personalised.
CPS policy states that a response to a VRR request should be sent to the victim within ten working days. The average in the six Areas visited was 11 working days and the worst performing Area had an average of 15 working days for the letter to be sent. Inspectors identified that the lateness of letters was often as a result of a varied interpretation of timescales. Inspectors also found that the language used was often heavy with legal jargon, which would likely leave the recipient confused. Only 12% of letters sent to victims were deemed as a quality response. Similar to letters sent under the VCL scheme, these letters contained simple mistakes including: incorrect gender of victim, incorrect spelling of names, confusing the victim with other witnesses or defendants, and dates of the letters and offences being incorrect.
Increased Funding for Rape and Sexual Abuse Victims
Specialist rape and sexual abuse support services will receive a £800,000 (10%) boost to help more victims across England and Wales under government plans announced today (Wednesday 7 November 2018).
The additional funding – now totalling £24 million over the next 3 years – will go towards vital services providing advice, support and counselling to help victims cope with and, as far as possible, recover from these devastating crimes. It will also increase the resilience of the wider sector supporting vulnerable individuals to provide timely, wrap-around support.
'Low-level paedophiles could avoid jail terms under new guidance'
Police have been told by government that paedophiles caught with indecent child abuse images can receive conditional cautions instead of jail as police struggle to cope with an explosion of cases.
Amid a 700 per cent rise in cases referred to police, the Ministry of Justice said some low-risk offenders could be given cautions with tough conditions aimed at rehabilitation. The move has been promoted by police chiefs who say they are “overwhelmed” by the surge in cases and claim jail offers no chance of rehabilitation to prevent re-offending.
MoJ Aims To Improve Probation Performance
The government expects probation providers to offer monthly face-to-face meetings with offenders during the first year of supervision, the lord chancellor has told MPs concerned about the government's approach to rehabilitation.
The Ministry of Justice is looking at how to rebuild confidence in the probation system after acknowledging that providers such as community rehabilitation companies have faced 'significant challenges' due to unforseen changes in the types of offenders coming to court and the sentences they receive.
Cases
R v Johnson [2018] EWCA Crim 2485
These unconnected cases were tried, in separate Crown Court proceedings, on a form of indictment which had been uploaded electronically by the prosecution onto the Crown Court Digital Case System ("the DCS"). In both cases the applicant was put in charge of the jury, which returned a verdict of guilty on counts contained in that form of indictment. It was only after conviction (but before sentence) that a court official realised that the form of indictment used at trial differed from the indictment on which the applicant had been arraigned, in particular, by adding one or more counts on which the jury had returned a guilty verdict but in respect of which the applicant had not entered a plea.
There is no doubt that, in both these cases, the proper course would have been for the indictment to have been amended (and any new counts formally 'sent' to the Crown Court if they could not otherwise be joined on the basis of evidence previously served) and for the accused to have been re-arraigned. There is also no doubt that if any of the procedural errors had resulted in unfairness to the appellants or otherwise called into question the safety of their convictions, this court would intervene.
Indeed, as this case demonstrates, the modern practice of uploading draft indictments onto the DCS, intended to be convenient for all parties and to improve efficiency, is capable of leading to confusion and serious error if care is not taken to ensure that appropriate steps are taken to apply for orders to amend existing indictments and/or to ensure re-arraignment. The risk of multiple versions and uncertainty as to which is the "true bill" is obvious. We emphasise that it is the duty of both prosecution and defence representatives to ensure that steps are taken to regularise the position as the case progresses and, in particular, that the form of indictment used at trial has received all necessary consideration. In that regard, it would also obviously be good practice for trial judges to enquire of counsel whether there were any outstanding issues in relation to the indictment before it is read before the jury at trial: whether that should be incorporated into a rule is a matter for the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee. However, if, notwithstanding, such obligations and practices, a trial proceeds on the basis of a form of indictment which was not properly dealt with, the primary consideration (as recognised in Malachi Lloyd Williams (above)) will be the fairness of the trial and the safety of the conviction, not the technical validity of the indictment.
Obscurity
Violence Inside the White House
Title 18 Section 1752(a)(4) of the United States Code makes it an offence to knowingly engage in any act of physical violence against any person inside the White House.
Sponsored
Crime Fees - Free AGFS Calculator
Crime Fees enables criminal barristers in England and Wales to easily calculate defence advocate fees under the new April 2018 AGFS (Scheme 10), and also under the proposed new Scheme 11 (currently under consultation).
No need to compare complex fee tables. Simply select the type of hearing and offence, set the number of trial days, and the app will tell you the fee.
Add each fee in the case to the basket and save for convenient reference until you have been paid.
Every permutation of case under the AGFS is catered for - the 3 advocate types, the 19 types of hearing, the 17 offence bands, and the 915 offences.