The Council is proposing a series of changes designed to bring greater clarity and consistency to guidelines and reflect developments in legislation. The proposals include:
• Sentencing children and young people – changing ‘children and young people’ to ‘children’ across overarching and offence specific guidelines to make it clear that children should not be treated as ‘mini adults’
• Sentencing very large organisations – incorporating Court of Appeal guidance on sentencing very large organisations in all relevant guidelines
• Exceptional financial hardship – clarifying how this mitigating factor in shop theft and the similar factor in benefit fraud relate to ‘Difficult and/or deprived background or personal circumstances’
• Domestic abuse – adding the aggravating factor, “Offence committed in a domestic abuse context” to more of the offence specific guidelines. For consistency with the domestic abuse overarching guideline, the factor has already been changed from “Offence committed in a domestic context” • Community orders – clarifying the wording relating to sex offending and providing additional guidance relating to committal to the Crown Court
The Council considers the proposed miscellaneous amendments to be significant enough to warrant consultation but not so substantial that they require new guidelines to be drafted. It is seeking views from judges, magistrates, legal advisers and practitioners and anyone with an interest in criminal justice.
The consultation is available on the Council’s website and is open until 27 November 2024.