Policy paper

Overarching Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 factsheet

Updated 20 August 2022

What are we going to do?

• Back our police by equipping officers with the powers and tools they need to keep themselves and all of us safe.
• Introduce tougher sentencing for the worst offenders and end automatic halfway release from prison for serious crimes.
• Improve the efficiency of the court and tribunal system by modernising existing court processes.

How are we going to do it?

The Act:

• Protects our police by enshrining the Police Covenant in law, enabling special constables to join the Police Federation and introducing a new legal test that will compare a police driver to a peer with a similar level of training. This new test will strike the right balance between giving trained officers the confidence they need to fight crime effectively while holding to account those who drive in an inappropriate manner. Increases the maximum penalty from 12 months to two years in prison for anyone who assaults or commits an offence of battery against an emergency worker and extends mandatory life sentences to those convicted of the unlawful act manslaughter of an emergency worker who was acting in the exercise of their functions.
• Introduces a serious violence duty on specified authorities to work together to prevent and reduce serious violence (including domestic abuse and sexual offences).
• Places a duty on chief officers of police, local authorities and clinical commissioning groups or local health boards to undertake offensive weapons homicide reviews to learn the lessons from such deaths and help prevent future homicides.
• Strengthens the law that governs digital information extraction through the introduction of new statutory powers and a code of practice. The statutory powers will ensure that authorities can extract information from digital devices while protecting the privacy of victims of crime and others.
• The code of practice will guide authorities on the use of the powers and provide clarity and consistency in obtaining digital evidence.
• Reforms pre-charge bail to better protect vulnerable victims and witnesses.
• Extends the offence of arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence to cover a wider range of preparatory conduct in respect of sex offences committed against children under 13.
• Extends the scope of offences in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 relating to the abuse of positions of trust legislation to capture additional roles, such as sports coaches.
• Introduces a new offence to tackle breastfeeding voyeurism.
• Extends the time limit for prosecution of common assault or battery in domestic abuse cases.
• Ensures that the criminal courts have sufficient sentencing powers where criminal damage is caused to a memorial so that they can consider all the impacts, not just the monetary value of the damage done.
• Confers new powers on the police to assist them in locating human remains, to help provide closure where possible to families with missing loved ones.
• Amends the Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Act 2019 to ensure that it operates effectively to give the police and prosecutors the power to obtain faster access to electronic data held overseas.
• Provides for parliamentary scrutiny of statutory guidance about the police recording and retention of personal data relating to non-crime hate incidents.
• Strengthens the powers and penalties available to enable law enforcement agencies to crack down further on hare coursing.
• Strengthens the police’s power to tackle disruptive protests and protect the public by increasing the range of conditions police can impose on public assemblies, increasing the sentences for obstructing a highway and introducing new conditions police can set based on the noise generated by protests.
• Introduces a statutory offence of public nuisance, which will cover the same conduct as the existing common law offence.
• Protects access to our democratic institutions by prohibiting the obstruction of vehicular access to the Parliamentary Estate.
• Strengthens local council’s ability to protect schools, vaccination and test and trace sites from disruptive protests by introducing expedited Public Space Protection Orders.
• Strengthens police powers to tackle unauthorised encampments, where trespassers cause distress and misery to local communities and businesses.
• Introduces a number of road traffic measures to ensure the courts have the powers they need to deal with dangerous and careless drivers, place on a statutory footing the fees charged under the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme, return to a statutory footing the legal basis to charge vehicle recovery, storage and disposal fees for vehicles illegally, dangerously or obstructively parked, broken down or abandoned, including after theft or road traffic collision, remove the legal requirement to surrender their driving license before a person can accept a fixed penalty notice and allow the police in Scotland to issue fixed penalty notices on the spot to people who commit certain minor road traffic offences.
• Delivers on commitments made in the Sentencing White Paper to reform the sentencing and release framework, ensuring that we have a system that takes account of the true nature of crimes and protects the public from harm. Serious criminals will receive a tougher punishment and spend longer in prison. As part of this we are ending the automatic halfway release point from prison for an additional cohort of serious sexual and violent offenders; making a Whole Life Order the starting point for the premeditated murder of a child and preventing the automatic early release of prisoners who become of significant public protection concern.
• In addition, ensure that the system is agile enough to give offenders a fair start on their road to rehabilitation. Community sentencing should offer an appropriate level of punishment and address the underlying drivers of offending, providing interventions early to deflect people away from future offending. We will pilot a problem solving court approach to provide a robust alternative to an immediate custodial sentence and improve national consistency for adult Out Of Court Disposals. We will also reduce the time periods after which some criminal sentences become spent, aiding rehabilitation by helping offenders to move on with their lives.
• Puts on a statutory footing the Secretary of State for Justice’s policy of automatically referring every eligible Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) offender to the Parole Board for consideration for licence termination.
• Increases the maximum penalties for child cruelty offences.
• Places a statutory duty on the courts when sentencing offenders for assaults on workers providing a public service, performing a public duty or providing a service to the public, to treat that fact as an aggravating factor.
• Wherever possible children who offend should be diverted from custody. Our youth justice measures will strengthen alternatives to custody which promote rehabilitation, while at the same time ensuring that children who commit serious offences and pose a risk to the public receive sentences that reflect the seriousness of their offending.
• Empowers future providers of Secure Schools, which represent our vision for the future of youth custody— schools with security, rather than prisons with education, with wellbeing, education and purposeful activity at their heart.
• Introduces new Serious Violence Reduction Orders, giving the police power to stop and search adults convicted of knife and offensive weapons offences.
• Strengthens the management of sex offenders, including by enabling positive obligations and electronic monitoring requirements to be imposed on those who pose a risk through Sexual Harm Prevention Orders and Sexual Risk Orders.
• Strengthens the management of terrorism risk offenders on licence in the community by introducing new police powers of premises and personal search and an urgent power of arrest.
• Extends the football banning orders regime so that persons convicted of online abuse offences can be made subject to an order.
• Modernises the delivery of criminal justice and encourage greater use of technology, where appropriate. It will enable us to make permanent temporary provisions (in the Coronavirus Act 2020) which enable court users to participate in and observe proceedings remotely via video and audio technology to improve the accessibility and efficiency of our criminal courts and reduce the need for participants to travel unnecessarily to court; and to make specific provisions for Prisoner Escort and Custody Service officers to be able to supervise detainees in hearings taking place by way of live link in police stations, in particular Video Remand Hearings. Finally, we are enabling British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters to be present in the jury deliberation room, meaning that profoundly deaf individuals are not prevented from participating in jury service simply because they require the assistance of a BSL interpreter.
• Extends the scheme whereby individuals who hold historical convictions or cautions for same sex sexual activity can apply to have such convictions or cautions “disregarded” so that they are not disclosed on criminal record certificates and to receive a pardon.

Background

In December 2019, the Government was elected with manifesto commitments to protect and empower our police by enshrining “the Police Covenant into law”, “passing the Police Protection Bill”, introducing new powers to “tackle unauthorised traveller camps” and introducing “a new court order to target known knife carriers, making it easier for officers to stop and search those convicted of knife crime”. The manifesto also committed to empower the courts to tackle crime, ensuring a fair justice system by introducing “tougher sentencing for the worst offenders and [ending] automatic halfway release from prison for serious crimes”; and toughening “community sentences, for example by tightening curfews and making those convicted do more hours of community payback”. This Act contains a number of measures to support the delivery of those commitments. In particular, the Act gives effect to proposals set out in the following consultations and White Paper:

• Police Covenant for England and Wales.
• The Law, Guidance and Training Governing Police Pursuits.
• A new legal duty to support a multi-agency approach to preventing and tackling serious violence.
• Serious Violence Reduction Orders: a new court order to target known knife carriers.
• Strengthening police powers to tackle unauthorised encampments.
• Police powers: pre-charge bail.
• A Smarter Approach to Sentencing, which details several proposals covering both youth and adult offenders, aiming to produce a sentencing regime which is robust when faced with the most dangerous offenders, but agile enough to give offenders a fair start on their road to rehabilitation.

The Government’s manifesto also committed to trialling secure schools. Secure schools are a planned new form of youth custody which will align the youth custodial estate with international evidence that smaller, more therapeutic units are more successful in rehabilitating offenders and reducing reoffending.

During summer 2020, there was widespread upset about the damage and desecration of memorials. It has long been considered that the law is not sufficiently robust in this area— incidences of damage and desecration of memorials are typically of low monetary value, but very often carry a high sentimental and emotional impact. For this reason, we are legislating to remove the consideration of monetary value which would otherwise, in some cases, determine venue for trial and limit sentencing powers.

Further, COVID-19 has put pressure on our court rooms, and we’ve had to react quickly and temporarily to enable court users to participate in and observe “virtual” proceedings taking place remotely via video and audio technology. These changes have reduced inefficiencies for court users and time-pressed citizens, whilst also making the court process less intimidating for vulnerable people. We want to put these temporary provisions on a permanent footing with the ability to extend remote observation of hearings beyond “virtual” proceedings in the future – subject to judicial discretion.

Frequently asked questions

How much will these measures cost?

The impact assessments published alongside the Act indicate that the current estimated cost of the measures in the Act applying to England and Wales is between £100 million to £146 million per year once fully implemented.

Will these measures apply across the United Kingdom?

The majority of the provisions in the Act apply to England and Wales only, although certain provisions also apply to Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The provisions in the Act relate to a mixture of devolved and reserved or excepted matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.