The Defence Brief

Operation Croissant The Homicide and Major Organised Crimes Command unit of the Metropolitan Police recently contacted organisers of Operation Croissant to tell them that their plan to hand out free croissants to commuters in London is banned as a “corrupt practice” under section 114 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. Section 114 falls under the heading “Bribery, treating and undue influence”. Section 113 deals with bribery while section 114 deals with “treating”, which is exactly what it sounds like – giving somebody a treat to influence their decision to vote or refrain from voting.   Section 114 reads: “ 114 Treating. (1 )A person shall be guilty of a corrupt practice if he is guilty of treating. (2) A person shall be guilty of treating if he corruptly, by himself or by any other person, either before, during or after an election, directly or indirectly gives or provides, or pays wholly or in part the expense of giving or providing, any meat...

Reducing sentencing discounts will see more trials taking place I note this morning the Times are reporting on plans by the Sentencing Council to tighten up the time limit for defendants to plead guilty and receive the maximum credit - effectively this will reduce the credit received by many defendants. Currently, if a defendant pleads guilty he is "entitled" to a reduction in his or her sentence. Now, he's not really entitled to it but in effect almost every defendant will get the maximum discount if they plead guilty at the first opportunity, so "entitled" is a convenient shorthand. The maximum discount is one-third off the length of a sentence and that drops the closer you get to trial. There was an attempt a couple of years ago to tighten up on this but it seems to have been largely forgotten in the courts I appear in. The attempt was quite silly and saw some very inconsistent and overly rigid approaches adopted. Some courts were refusing the max...