Criminal Law Legislation Update

摘要

The Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 received Royal Assent on 13 March 2014. This Act was a response to the Ministry of Justice's consultation paper entitled Transforming Rehabilitation: A revolution in the way we manage offenders, which proposed a number of reforms to the legislation regarding the sentencing and release of offenders. The Ministry of Justice's final response proposed the extension of statutory supervision in the community to offenders serving short custodial sentences and the creation of more flexibility for probation services to rehabilitate offenders while on community or suspended sentence orders. The Act implements these reform proposals. On 1 February 2015, the provisions of the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 (ORA 2014) which are not already in force will be brought into effect through the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 (Commencement No. 2) Order 2015 (SI 2015/40). The provisions now in force are ss 1-9, 11-13, 15-19, 21 and Schedules 1-3 and 5-7 which largely make amendments to the adult sentencing framework contained in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (CJA 2003). This update is split into two parts; the first part deals with ss 1-3 and related Schedules of the Act.