Criminal Justice Bill: call for evidence

Aims of the Bill

Measures in the Bill include:

• New criminal offences relating to items used in serious crime, theft or fraud, including 3D printer firearms templates and tablet presses, electronic devices for use in theft, SIM farms, knives and offensive weapons
• The introduction of a broader offence of encouraging or assisting serious self-harm and new offences relating to the taking of intimate images without consent
• Changes to the law on corporate criminal liability to extend criminal liability from individual senior managers, to include their organisation
• The expansion of existing police powers to test suspects in police detention for drugs, to seize bladed articles, to search for and seize stolen goods
• Provisions for IP address and domain name suspension orders allowing law enforcement agencies to apply for a court order to prevent access to IP addresses and domain names that are being used for criminal purposes
• Extending and clarifying the existing law allowing police and law enforcement officers to access driver licence records
• Powers for courts to order the attendance of offenders at sentencing hearings and punish them if they do not attend
• New aggravating factors increasing the seriousness of child sex offences where there is grooming, and of murder where it took place in connection with the end of a relationship with the victim
• Provisions to allow for the transfer of prisoners from England and Wales to cells rented in prisons in foreign countries
• Provisions to make certain offenders convicted of coercive or controlling behaviour automatically subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements
• Changes to the confiscation regime in England and Wales giving effect to the Government’s acceptance of a number of Law Commission recommendations and provisions to allow the creation of a Suspended Accounts Scheme
• Changes to the law on serious crime prevention orders to expand the circumstances in which orders can be applied for and made, and by enabling the use of electronic monitoring and standardised notification requirements to improve compliance and enforcement
• A new framework of nuisance begging directions, prevention notices and prevention orders, together with broadly identical nuisance rough sleeping directions, notices and orders and an offence of trespassing with intent to commit a criminal offence
• Amended powers to tackle anti-social behaviour (ASB), including expanding the timeframe for which a dispersal order can be put in place, lowering the minimum age at which a Community Protection Notice (CPN) can be imposed to 10 years old, extending powers to apply for a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO), extending Community Safety Accreditation Scheme powers to breaches of PSPOs and CPNs, increasing the upper limit of fixed penalty notices for breaches of CPNs and PSPOs to £500 and creating a duty for local policing bodies to raise awareness of ASB case reviews in their police areas
• A duty on the College of Policing to issue a Code of Practice about ethical policing and a power for the Secretary of State to make certain regulations about appeals by chief officers of police and local policing bodies to the Police Appeals Tribunals.

Follow the progress of the Criminal Justice Bill

The Criminal Justice Bill was introduced to the House of Commons on 14 November 2023. The Bill’s second reading was held on 28 November 2023.

• Bills before Parliament: Criminal Justice Bill
• Read Explanatory Notes: Criminal Justice Bill
• House of Commons Library Briefing Paper

Oral evidence sessions for this Bill are expected to be held on 12 and 14 December.

Guidance on submitting written evidence

Deadline for written evidence submissions

The Public Bill Committee is now able to receive written evidence. The sooner you send in your submission, the more time the Committee will have to take it into consideration and possibly reflect it in an amendment. The order in which amendments are taken in Committee will be available in due course under Selection of Amendments on the Bill documents pages. Once the Committee has dealt with an amendment it will not revisit it.

The first sitting of the Public Bill Committee is expected to be on Tuesday 12 December and the Committee is scheduled to report by Tuesday 30 January. However, please note that when the Committee concludes its consideration of the Bill it is no longer able to receive written evidence and it can conclude earlier than the expected deadline of 5.00pm on Tuesday 30 January. You are strongly advised to submit your written evidence as soon as possible.

Your submission should be emailed to scrutiny@parliament.uk

Further guidance on submitting written evidence can be found here.

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