Impact of bad character provisions on the courts
Date: 09 March 2009
This report provides evidence from six court centres over eight months in 2006 on the use of applications to admit bad character evidence in criminal cases. This provision was introduced as part of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and was designed to allow evidence of a defendant's bad character to play a greater part in the prosecution of cases.
The overall finding was that the new law represented a major codification of behaviour relating to admitting bad character evidence and had a beneficial impact on criminal trials.
- Research into the impact of bad character provisions on the courts (PDF 0.62mb 59 pages)