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Reform of legislation. |
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Codification and
consolidation |
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Codification gathers all previous statutes
and case law together in one act Sale of Goods Act 1994 =
codified the law.
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Consolidating Act does not include the
case law gathers together all previous statutes into one act, contains
no new provisions.
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Reform of the Offences
Against the Person Act 1861 |
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Home Office Bill |
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Reforming the Offences Against the Person
Act 1861 |
Home Office published a Bill in February 1998. |
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Injury; clause 15 |
"Injury" is defined as physical or mental injury.
"Physical injury does not include anything caused by disease, but....
includes pain, unconsciousness and any other impairment of a person's
physical condition".
"Mental injury does not include anything caused by disease....".
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Law Commission Proposals |
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"Legislating the Criminal Code: Offences
against the Person and General Principles" (1993) |
Law Commission thought the OAP Act could be used in cases of the
transmission of disease, but the government has not accepted this
entirely.
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Criminal Law not appropriate for
Transmission of disease. |
It was felt that it would be inappropriate to use the criminal law where
disease was transmitted through normal everyday activities.
Especially where there was a reckless transmission of relatively minor
diseases such as mumps or measles even though there might be serious
consequences for more vulnerable citizens.
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AIDs? |
As to potentially more serious diseases the government felt it is
appropriate to criminalize the deliberate transmission of a disease
causing serious illness. However, the government maintains that the
existing law requires no significant change.
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Section 47 |
Intentionally or recklessly causing injury = triable either way = 5 years
imprisonment.
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Section 20 |
Recklessly causing serious injury = triable either way = 7 years
imprisonment.
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Section 18 |
Intentionally causing serious injury = indictable = life imprisonment.
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These three offences have now been
incorporated in a Bill. |
The Bill is based very much on the Law Commission's proposals which were
widely critically reviewed |
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Bill removes the difficulty of trying to
distinguish between "causing" and "inflicting" GBH |
There are some obvious problems with them. For example, if there is a
justifiable need to have separate offences dealing with intentional and
reckless serious harm why should this not also be necessary for cases of
non-serious harm? |
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The artificial distinction between
"wounding" and other bodily harm, |
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What makes harm more serious? |
Its nature?
Its consequence?
Its effect on the victim's lifestyle?
The way it is administered?
The context in which it is administered?
No definitional distinction between serious and non-serious injury is
made.
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Horder has argued that the desire for
certainty and the fair labelling principle point to the need for greater
distinctions between offences. |
He advocates the need for "moral nominalism" so that the law should
reflect ordinary moral distinctions by more descriptive definitions.
Thus, there should be separate crimes dealing with mental cruelty and
separate offences representing different methods of commission
(disablement, disfigurement, castration etc.). |
