Criminal Justice Bill receives Royal Assent
09 May 2008
The Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill has received Royal Assent, ensuring further important measures are now in place to tackle crime and cut reoffending.
The new Act builds on ten years of reform to criminal justice to rebalance the system in favour of victims and the law-abiding majority. These steps will help to protect the public, promote and improve access to justice, and increase public confidence in the justice system.
The Act will:
- 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 new civil penalties for serious beaches of data protection principles
- abolish the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel
- reinstate the statutory ban on industrial action by prison officers
- 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 - extend existing crack house closure powers to tackle premises at the centre of serious and persistent disorder or nuisance, regardless of tenure
- create a new offence of causing a nuisance or disturbance on NHS premises
- 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
- provide for special immigration status for terrorists and serious criminals who cannot currently be removed from the UK for legal reasons.
Further details of the Act and its passage through Parliament are available in the 'legislation' section of the site:
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