Criminal

The Law Commission has proposed sweeping reforms to the criminal appeals process, including changing the ‘real possibility’ test used by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC).

The ‘long-awaited’ Home Office guidance on failure to prevent fraud (FPF) is now available and the new law will come into effect in September. In this week’s NLJ, Michael Goodwin KC and Theo Burges, third-six pupil barrister, Red Lion Chambers, write that ‘the spectre of the likely interaction between FPF and deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) also looms for corporates’.

Michael Goodwin KC & Theo Burges explain how deferred prosecution agreements can be used in tandem with the new failure to prevent fraud offence

Governments need to focus on non-custodial ways to cut reoffending rather than simply trying to look tough by locking up criminals for longer, a report by former Lord Chancellor David Gauke has warned.

The security service MI5 has apologised in court, having admitted to misleading judges in a series of cases in the High Court and in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) about the conduct of one of its agents.

A man suspected of insider trading has escaped extradition due to the double criminality rule, in a landmark case that ‘effectively overturns’ a 20-year-old House of Lords precedent.

Is our criminal appeals system fit for purpose? Jon Robins, NLJ columnist, writes that he recently attended an ‘astonishing press conference’ on the Lucy Letby case, in which the international panel of medical experts, working pro bono, ‘did not equivocate.

Is our criminal appeals system any more prepared to recognise an injustice than it was back in the ‘bad old days’? Jon Robins reports

Judges have, for the first time, been issued with sentencing guidelines on blackmail, kidnap and false imprisonment.

The justice budget for the coming year, 2025–26, is set to be about one third higher (£13.5bn) in real terms than in 2019–20 (£10bn), according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.