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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
Chief Inspector of Probation: Probation Services Model Irredeemably Flawed
The current model for the delivery of probation services in England and Wales is irredeemably flawed, and a major rethink is needed to create a system that is fit for the future, according to the Chief Inspector of Probation.
In her final Annual Report, Dame Glenys Stacey depicts a sector under exceptional strain:
- both the public-sector National Probation Service (NPS) and privately-owned Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) are failing to meet some of their performance targets. The NPS is performing better overall, whereas eight out of ten CRCs inspected this year received the lowest possible rating – ‘Inadequate’ – for the implementation and delivery of probation supervision. In too many cases, there is not enough purposeful activity.
- the probation profession has been diminished. There is a national shortage of qualified probation professionals, and too much reliance on unqualified or agency staff.
- in the day-to-day work of probation professionals, there has been a drift away from practice informed by evidence. The critical relationship between the individual and the probation worker is not sufficiently protected in the current probation model.
CPS Guidance for Childlike Sex Dolls
This Legal Guidance is intended to assist when prosecutors are asked to advise on allegations that an offence has been committed involving a doll withis in any way knowingly concerned is in any way knowingly concerned childlike characteristics which is capable of being used for sexual purposes.
It relates to possible offences of importing a childlike sex doll, distributing or selling it (or having it with intent to do so), or sending it by post. There is no offence of simple possession of a childlike sex doll.
‘Increase in crack cocaine use inquiry: summary of findings’
The findings support other data sets which show an increase in crack cocaine use. These data sets and this inquiry indicate that the trend began to develop several years ago, around 2013.
This investigation has identified several factors which may have influenced the rise in crack use, including increased availability and affordability of crack and aggressive marketing of the drug by dealers.
Other factors linked to the increase in crack cocaine use, which were not directly linked to the increased supply, were changes in the stigma about crack and a lack of police focus on targeting drug dealing. It was not clear from this enquiry whether ‘county lines’ drug dealing operations had driven the increase in crack use, given that use had also increased in areas where county lines were not prevalent.
'Solicitors told to stay behind and explain late guilty pleas'
Criminal defence practitioners will be required to discuss, in open court, with a judge the reason for a late guilty plea as part of government measures to reduce a 'disproportionately high' number of cracked trials.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service wrote to solicitors this week, informing them of changes in court practice across Thames Valley after conducting a three-month data collection exercise of cases involving a guilty plea entered on the day of the trial.
Cases
R v Diamond [2019] EWCA Crim 506
On 13 April 2018, in the Crown Court at Maidstone before His Honour Judge Statman, the appellant pleaded guilty to three counts of causing death by dangerous driving and one count of causing serious injury by dangerous driving. On 8 May 2018, he was sentenced by the same judge to seven and a half years' imprisonment concurrent on each of the counts of causing death by dangerous driving and 3 years' imprisonment concurrent on the count of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, a total of seven and a half years' imprisonment.
We consider that the judge was entitled to stand back and look at the overall seriousness of the offending. The aggravating features of the offending included the fact that the appellant caused three deaths, one of them a 16-year-old girl, and that, given that they were passengers in his car, this was a case where he could anticipate the possible deaths of those passengers. The fact that the appellant was driving at excessive speed whilst over the drink drive limit was, as the judge rightly identified, a very important aggravating feature. We do not accept Mr Smith's submissions that in taking that into account as an aggravating feature the judge somehow was guilty of double counting. As we said to Mr Smith during the course of argument, it seemed to us that many of his arguments in relation to the Guideline tended to adopt the approach of treating it as tramlines, which is an approach which has been deprecated time and time again in this court.
Obscurity
Taking a Photograph In Court
Taking a photograph in a court is contrary to section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925.
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