Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill

Overview

The Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill sets out to:

• Provide a statement of the principles and purposes of sentencing;
• Make provisions about sentencing guidance;
• Make provision to enable the courts to include community requirements with suspended sentences;
• Set statutory starting points for life sentence tariffs for murder;
• Make provision for unduly lenient sentences arrangements to extend to all Crown Court sentences;
• Introduce ‘Charlotte’s Law’, which makes provision for increased sentences where a killer fails to disclose the location of their victim’s remains; provides for an proportionate reduction in that increase if a subsequent disclosure is made; and includes provision equivalent to ‘Helen’s Law’, requiring the Parole Commissioners to take failure to disclose into account when considering a prisoner’s release on licence;
• Introduce a statutory aggravator model for hate crime, which identifies protected characteristics for this purpose;
• Introduce a vulnerable victim aggravator, where the offender knows or ought reasonably to have known the victim was vulnerable;
• Introduce a new offence of assaulting a person delivering a public service, performing a public duty or providing a service to the public, or a person assisting such a person, along with a corresponding statutory aggravator for more serious offences; and,
• Introduce increases to the maximum penalties and minimum disqualification periods for offences causing death or serious injury by driving; as well as making provision so that driving disqualification periods will normally be served after release from prison.

Why your views matter

As part of the Assembly’s normal legislative processes, the Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill has been referred to the Committee for Justice for scrutiny.

The Committee is seeking your views on the objectives, proposals and potential consequences of the Bill. Your views will help to inform the Committee’s consideration of the Bill.

Please note, you can choose which parts of the survey you wish to respond to. You do not have to complete the whole survey and can choose which sections or individual pages to complete.

Links to the Bill along with the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum can be found below. 

A further link has also been provided to all papers relevant to the Bill received by the Committee to date.