Cleaning up the Act
05/01/2009
In this months' Independent Lawyer (January 2009), Kate Stone looks at how the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 addresses some of the concerns over the dangerous offender regime introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
The article is a follow-up to an earlier article (May 2008) examining the sentencing regime for dangerous offenders.
In this follow-up article, Kate covers:
- The problematic aspects of the dangerous offender regime in its original form and how it was widely criticised.
- The series of significant changes introduced by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (with effect from 14 July 2008).
- Residual concerns
Kate concludes:
"Practitioners should take clear instructions on previous convictions and check the accuracy of information provided by the crown. For example, where a defendant pleaded guilty on a particular basis, this should be made clear to the court...
"The assessment of future risk is not a discipline in which judges are trained, yet under this legislation they are expected to make decisions that will have an extraordinarily serious impact on defendants' lives, sometimes on the basis of nothing more than a probation officer's report...
"In the meantime, practitioners [should] ensure that probation reports address the right issues, and apply the correct test, and the desirability of instructing defence experts, usually psychologists, to consider risk"
For more details or to request a copy of this article, contact Helen Ray on 0161 236 1840.
