The proposals, announced this week in a report, 'Confiscation of the Proceeds of Crime After Conviction', are the culmination of a Home Office-commissioned review. They aim to make confiscation orders more effective, recover a potential £8m more ill-gotten gains from offenders, and speed up the recovery system.
Law Commissioner Professor Penney Lewis said: ‘The current system for recovering the proceeds of crime is ineffective and letting down victims and the public.
‘By boosting enforcement powers, imposing more realistic and fairer orders, and speeding up proceedings, we can ensure greater public confidence in the system, and send a strong message that crime doesn’t pay.’
Under the reforms, strict timetables for hearings would be set so that confiscation proceedings take place immediately after the defendant is sentenced. Courts would be given powers to impose ‘contingent enforcement orders’ at the same time as making a confiscation order so the defendant’s assets, including their property and bank account, could be seized if proceeds are not paid back in time.
To prevent defendants hiding their assets, courts’ powers to impose ‘restraint orders’ would be strengthened by placing the ‘risk of dissipation’ test on a statutory footing. The factors for assessing a defendant as having a criminal lifestyle would be updated to take account of gains from their wider criminal conduct, and more attention would be paid to the defendant’s ability to pay.
The Commission also proposes that judges be able to adjust the funds that must be paid back, to avoid situations where there is no realistic prospect of recovering the full amount. Finally, the new confiscation regime would have a clear statutory objective to deprive defendants of their benefit from criminal conduct, rather than the objective of punishment.
