Consultation on assaults and other offences against the person

01 Sep 2005

Assaults and other offences against the person are dealt with by the courts every day and there is a large amount of case law but there are no comprehensive guideline judgments. The Sentencing Advisory Panel has today issued another in its series of consultation papers about sentencing in criminal cases.

The Panel's consultation covers offences that come before the courts in large numbers (such as common assault and actual bodily harm) and those that result in significant custodial sentences (such as attempted murder and wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm) and for which consistent sentencing guidelines are needed. The consultation also includes the offence of cruelty to a child.

Amongst other things the consultation paper discusses the relative impact of a number of aggravating factors and whether it is possible to rank, in terms of seriousness, various types of offending behaviour.

Responses to the consultation paper should be received by Friday 25 November 2005. The paper can be dowloaded from the Sentencing Guidelines website. Use the link on the right to visit their site.

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