News Plans For Assault Terms

Under new plans, criminals convicted of assault will be sentenced on the basis of the harm they caused their victims, the Sentencing Council have announced.

Judges and Magistrates in England and Wales are currently revising the guidelines.

Sentencing guidelines for assault offences are currently based on a description of the offence.

The proposed changes will ensure a consistent approach to sentencing and a "clearer and more coherent decision making process".

For assault cases, the court will now determine sentences by considering "the offender's culpability in committing the offence and the harm caused, or intended to be caused", to the victim.

The review will affect 84,000 offenders sentenced for assaults in 2008.

Currently, three of the four categories of assault occasioning actual bodily harm (ABH) include descriptions of premeditated assault with different levels of injury.

But many spontaneous assaults, including drunken violence in the street, do not easily fit into those categories.

Following on from a landmark Court of Appeal ruling last December, when Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge increased the sentences handed out to three men who were jailed over deaths resulting from unprovoked street attacks.

Chairman of the Sentencing Council, Lord Justice Leveson said: "Our revisions set out a proposed guideline that means any offence of assault can be met with a proportionate sentence based on a consistent framework.

"This will make it easily applied by judges and readily understood both by victims and the public."

In the consultation document, the council said judges and magistrates have often not followed the existing guidelines and there has been a "general trend towards longer sentences for all assault offences" over the last 10 years.

The public consultation on the new guidelines will end on 5 January 2011.

(BMcN/GK)