In the dock
Government modifies plans to make offenders attending sentencing
Plans to make offenders attend court for sentencing have been modified after critics suggested they would prove ineffective.
Old plans
In November 2023, the Conservative home secretary James Cleverly published a criminal justice bill dealing with the issue. Clause 22 would have added two provisions to the sentencing code, passed by parliament as the Sentencing Act 2020.
The first would have applied only to offenders who may — or must — be sentenced to life imprisonment. If they refused to obey an order to attend, they would have faced an additional penalty for contempt of court of up to two years’ imprisonment.
The second proposal, applying to any adult offender convicted in the Crown Court, would have allowed a prison officer or a custody officer to “use reasonable force, if necessary and proportionate, to give effect to” the court’s attendance order.
As I wrote at the time, the power to punish offenders for non-attendance would have applied only to those least likely to be deterred by an additional prison sentence. I also doubted the practically of dragging offenders into the dock.
That bill never reached the House of Lords and lapsed when the general election was called last year.
New plans
In January, the prime minister promised something similar. But an announcement expected this morning makes it clear that the government intends to go further.
The justice secretary Shabana Mahmood is to publish a victims and courts bill. Frustratingly, we won’t get to read it until this afternoon. But a press notice — shorn of some of its more excitable adjectives — says:
Because offenders facing long sentences or whole-life orders may not be deterred solely by additional time behind bars, the government is giving judges the power to impose a range of sanctions on prisoners — including confinement to their cells and loss of privileges such as extra time in the gym — as well as up to two more years behind bars.
The bill also extends eligibility for these penalties to all cases in the Crown Court.
Offenders who have been ordered to attend court by a judge but whose behaviour results in their removal from the courtroom will face the same penalties.
Comment
It seems the government may have abandoned the idea of authorising custody officers to use reasonable force. That power is undesirable: no judge wants to see an offender dragged into the dock and restrained by dock officers. It may also be unnecessary as prison officers can already use force to restrain prisoners.
On the other hand, I’m not sure how judges can make binding orders withdrawing privileges from prisoners who have not yet been awarded them. Won’t that undermine the authority of prison governors?
Update 1515: the bill, as published, introduces the concept of a prison sanctions order. This means
an order—
(a) imposing one or more sanctions of a description specified for the purpose of this section by regulations made by the Secretary of State, and
(b) in relation to any sanction for which the regulations provide for there to be a maximum period, specifying the period for which it is imposed, which must not exceed the maximum.
It adds:
The only sanctions that may be specified in the regulations are sanctions that correspond to the punishments that may be imposed by a governor under prison rules for an offence against discipline.
All rise?
HM Courts and Tribunals Service made an announcement last week that would have been inconsistent with any thoughts of shackling defendants in the dock:
I’m sure this change will be welcomed by those who are unable to stand. But isn’t “all rise” an Americanism? In the courts I report from, the ushers always say “court rise” when the judges enter.
Further measures
Separately, the bill will limit parental responsibility for offenders who are convicted of serious sexual abuse offences against their own children.
Further measures include:
Updating the victim contact scheme and establishing a new helpline so victims have a clear route to request information about an offender’s release;
Placing a duty on local authorities and social housing providers to co-operate with the victims’ commissioner in relation to anti-social behaviour;
Increased flexibility for the director of public prosecutions in appointing crown prosecutors;
A power for the lord chancellor to prescribe rates at which private prosecutors may recover their costs from central funds; and
More time for the attorney general to refer a sentence to the Court of Appeal as unduly lenient where a request is made to the law officers in the last 14 days of the current 28-day time-limit.
Thanks, Eric; we are ad idem over this. BUT: the trouble as I view it is that it is all too easy to talk up a “hard on crime” mantra, whatever your more constructive preferences, to the point that you may so easily become the prisoner of your own “hard on crime” positioning. Then along come a narrowly fought by-election or further local authority losses -or both- and Rob McSweeney or whoever cautioning against sensible long overdue reform. And then watch out for worthier inclinations to be watered down or deferred, that is to say effectively abandoned for another few decades.
I continue very much to agree with Joshua’s sentiments voiced in his paragraph four under Old plans. I continue also to make myself unpopular in some quarters by describing the unrelenting focus upon, almost however achieved, having the convicted defendant in the dock. I continue also to assert that what must continue to distinguish “us” -all flawed creatures- from those who have offended is,rather, to focus upon treating “them” with every strand of equality and fairness of process “they” have been found to have denied “their “ fellow creatures found to have been “their” victims. The incontestable facts are, firstly, that over many kinds of offending those with the fewest advantages in life are disproportionately likely to offend and, secondly, that they are likely to alternate between victimhood and offenders, in both instances by their disadvantaged peers. Hence the quotation marks. The community has never been and never will be polarised into those who offend and those who are victims - and never the twain shall meet. Also I agree very much with Joshua’s point at his second paragraph under Comments. Whilst still hopeful over imaginative and grounded sentencing reform in expectation of some measured recommendation from Mr. Gauke, I remain troubled every time that even theoretically thoughtful commentators and certainly the likes of government spokespersons right up sometimes to Secretaries of State have this habit of elliptically returning to and mining for the punitive element in every proposal. What is this unhealthy obsession ;where does it come from; is this disturbing trend an inescapable leaning on their individual parts; or is it just an equally unhealthy fixation with finding and magnifying those elements it is calculated will appeal to the more vengeful inclinations in the electorate? These- I say again-unhealthy tendencies are very likely to jeopardise meaningful, long overdue reform which can otherwise readily enough improve our society and its dealings with transgression. What is this exceptionalism which I fear I detect has too many of us convinced that we here in the U.K. have our punitive line in sentencing right in the face of so many other nations faring better with more constructive lines and with far lower prison populations than ours. Why do we still seem to cling to the daft belief that “our Johnny” is the only one in step?