A well known family barrister with a penchant for making grossly misleading claims about the criminal courts (where she has never practised) has put out another offering. Like the rest of the legal profession who have the slightest idea what they are talking about, I disagree.
/1 Let us trot quickly past the more flagrantly obvious parts: if there is a trial going on then the parties at that point are "complainant" and "defendant", not "victim" and "abuser". The poster knows this. The average GCSE student knows this.
/2

What a difference a minute makes!

To be fair, it's currently showing as 2 stops (and about 300m) away, I just thought it was funny that they've got it set to change just in time... Second act twist: I've gone from second in line to "a few more"...

I think the occasional example of the criminal Bar fee structure is helpful.

I have just spent a couple of hours prepping cases for Monday. I've got maybe another hour to go.

On Monday I'll travel to court and back, maybe 90 minutes each way. No expenses claim.
/1 I have three cases. I'll probably be at court working from 0900 to about 1200. Might be all day but hopefully not. Won't know until it happens.

All are plea hearings, so I have to advise on plea and then conduct the hearings.

/2

It's felt really weird this year being ill with something other than covid. A couple of days after lockdown started I heard back from my doctor that my test results were back and they suggested that I probably had cancer. NHS rules said I had to be seen within 14 days. Of course, everything was shut down in hospitals so that 14 days from late March now meant "hopefully July".

On the bright side, this meant that I was relatively unworried by the prospect of catching covid.

I've been wondering about this. I'm not sure how I feel about @DJWarburton, a politician of whom I had never heard until today but with whose politics I largely disagree, pointing to my threads on the Bill in his defence of voting for it.

https://twitter.com/alexbloor/status/1372324659237163010

As a gut reaction, I suppose I dislike it. But as the great Carl Sagan once said, I try not to think with my gut.

I have been doing these posts to inform. I was moved by the rank inaccuracies, whether honest or not, in posts about the Bill.

Clause 101 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is probably one of the least controversial in the whole document.

It sets a whole life sentence as the starting point for the premeditated murder of a child. By way of background: anybody convicted of murder gets life.

Life sentences have what is known as a tariff but is more correctly called the minimum term. You serve the minimum term (all of it) before you are even eligible for release.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, clause 100: the first of the "sentencing" clauses from the title. This is a relatively quick and easy one, which some will say is fair and some will say is unnecessary tinkering. It could well be both. At present, s312 of the Sentencing Code imposes a minimum 6 months (4 for a youth) for threatening with a bladed article unless there are "particular" circumstances that make it unjust to do so.

Clause 100 substitutes "exceptional" for "particular".

That's it.

I'm going to tackle Clause 61 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. This is the clause that deals with travellers.

I am going to begin with this: I do not pretend to know enough about the issues facing travelling communities (I include Gypsies, Roma and all others) to be able to say anything very much about how much this will impact on them. My experience outside of Court is that each year a group of travellers has moved onto the village green where I live. Some get irate, I don't.

Another thread on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

I am going to skip the section on public order and encampments. Much has already been written about it, ranging from the insightful to the simply wrong. I may come back to it.

Let's look at driving instead. Clauses 64 and 65 increase the maximum sentences for causing death or serious injury through driving.

Clause 64 first: it's couched in terms of an amendment to a Schedule of another Act, as these things often are, but what it amounts to is this:

This post by @Keir_Starmer has made me very sad and, the more I think about it, increasingly angry. I consider it to be thoroughly dishonest. I would like to think that it is ignorance but no matter how much I try, I cannot suspend my disbelief enough.

Let me explain why.

https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1371547120080195585

Before I do, let me clarify that yes, I know that there are all sorts of problems with getting sexual offences to court and that a tiny minority end up in convictions. Those are problems but they are not the particular problems I am addressing here. This is about sentencing.

Right, time to look at one of the controversial ones: 10 years for damaging a statue. Well, sort of.

Clause 46 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill has been widely reported as imposing a 10 year sentence for damaging a statue. I'm going to take this in stages. First, remember always that the maximum sentence for any given offence is very rarely imposed and even more rarely is it imposed for anything other than a really serious offence of its kind.

So also please stop this nonsense about people getting 10 years for being annoying...

Last thread of the day on the new Bill. Clause 45. This one is relatively quick.

The Sexual Offences Act 2003, sections 16-19 create offences of sexual activity with a child in breach of a position of trust. Positions of trust are defined by the Sexual Offences Act. They include working at an educational establishment where the child is a student, working at a care home, hospital, children's home etc.

Another thread on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

This time, clause 44: arranging a child sex offence. s14 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 makes it a criminal offence to arrange or facilitate the commission of any offence under sections 9-13 of the Act.

9: sexual activity with a child
10: causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity

As always, this is excellent from @JoshuaRozenberg. I will respectfully disagree about his main objection, however, which is that setting a maximum of 10 years (where before it was unlimited) will necessarily result in higher sentences.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaRozenberg/status/1371118231994445825

He rightly points to the fact that relatively restrained protests, if they nonetheless constitute a public nuisance, have generally met with light sentences. This, he suggests, will necessarily change with a 10 year maximum being set.

Next from the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill: clauses 4 and 5: dangerous and careless driving by police constables.

These adjust the definition of dangerous and careless driving as it relates to constables who have been trained in driving. The standard definition of careless or inconsiderate driving is driving which falls below the standard of a competent and careful driver. The definition of dangerous driving is that it falls "far" below that standard and it would be obvious to such a driver that it is dangerous.

A lot has been written in the last few days about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Most of it is about "Part 3: Public Order" (mainly to do with cracking down on protests) and clause 46 (criminal damage to memorials).

I'm going to look at some of the rest of it. Anybody who has read my legal threads before should know that these are not the finely crafted legal summaries of @barristersecret: expect rambling historical deviations, to the extent that in this first thread I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up using the phrase "in my day"...

Like most people, I haven't seen complete footage of everything happening at the vigil, nor seen intelligence briefings etc, so like most people I cannot say for sure whether a given action was excessive. Based on the incomplete evidence I have seen, it looks as though some police action may very well have been excessive, as judged from my nice warm, comfortable study.

My second thread of the day, this time courtesy of @JolyonMaugham, who is outraged by the government's plans to impose 10 years on those who cause serious annoyance to a section of the public, claiming that it is because they hate the right to protest.

Let's see, shall we?

https://twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1370127665764651008

Any lawyer who has a passing familiarity with criminal law knows that causing a public nuisance, which is what this proposed section 59 is about, is already an offence, contrary to common law, which means that the penalty is "imprisonment", without a defined maximum.