Victims allowed to challenge ‘soft’ sentences

Changes to legislation will now allow victims of domestic violence, child abuse and stalking to appeal against "soft" sentences given to their perpetrators. 

 

Until now, the pre-existing statutory scheme which allowed victims to appeal unduly lenient sentences did not include all serious crimes. This affected thousands of cases and up to a third of victims of serious crimes.

 

The change in legislation will now include a wider variety of crimes and allow victims to appeal to the Attorney General to review the sentences imposed on their attacker.

 

The change comes weeks after Boris Johnson was elected as the new Prime Minister for the UK. He has pledged for longer sentences for violent offenders and to scrap automatic early release of prisoners.

 

A Government spokesperson said: "It is vital the public and victims have confidence that serious offenders will serve sentences which properly reflect the severity of their crimes,". 

 

It was only last month that Victims' Commissioner, Dame Vera Baird called for this to change: "The point of the unduly lenient sentence scheme when it was introduced over 30 years ago was to make sure someone who had been deeply affected by crime could ask the Attorney General to consider whether the sentence handed down by a trial court was unduly lenient. There has never been a systematic review and there are now obvious cases which should be included."

 

One of the cases referred to includes the families of young children whose indecent images were distributed to paedophiles by Vanessa George, a nursery nurse. It has been reported that George, who has been in prison since 2009, is now due for release. Under the existing statutory scheme, the victims were not able to appeal the sentence.

 

The change to the scheme will now include crimes such as child abuse, domestic violence and stalking. It will be announced within upcoming weeks by the Ministry of Justice and Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General.