Law Weblog

Criminal Justice Bill received Royal Assent on 8th May, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 finally is law

Saturday 17 May 2008 at 6:17 pm | In News | Post Comment

The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 will (amongst other things):

• introduce a new criminal of offence of incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation
• clarify the law on self defence, articulating the state’s responsibility to stand by those acting in good faith when using force in self defence
• introduce a minimum tariff of two years for prisoners serving indeterminate public protection sentences
• end automatic discounts for offenders given an indeterminate sentence after the initial sentencing decision has been judged unduly lenient
• give powers for courts to make dangerous offenders given a discretionary life sentence serve a higher proportion of their tariff before being eligible for parole
• create a presumption that trials in magistrates’ courts will proceed in the event the accused fails to appear
• Introduce a new offence of possession of extreme pornographic images
• provide for non-dangerous offenders who breach the terms of their licence to be recalled to prison for a fixed 28 day period
• create a Youth Rehabilitation Order – a generic community sentence for children and young offenders, this will target the causes of offending behaviour and will simplify the current sentencing framework
• create the Youth Conditional Caution for young offenders
• bring compensation for those wrongly convicted broadly into line with compensation for victims of crime

Some of the sections of the Act commence on Royal Assent, some two months later, some by Commencement Order.
Many changes to the syllabus will have to be made.
Almost as if the draftsman wanted to confuse students, section 9 amends section 142 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and states the purposes of sentencing offenders under 18 the word deterrent is not used, but implied in ‘prevention offending’.