In a legal challenge brought by the MP Tom Watson, and supported by campaign group Liberty, the High Court ruled that a major plank of the government’s surveillance strategy is unlawful (Secretary of State for the Home Department v Watson MP & Ors [2018] EWCA Civ 70). When Theresa May was Home Secretary, she...
“Revenge porn”, the criminal act of posting online intimate sexual pictures/video of a person without their consent, carries a potential prison sentence of up to 2 years, so already there is every reason to think twice before exacting this type of revenge on a former lover. However, celebrity vlogger Chrissy Chambers has taken the...
On 31st January 2018, regulations bring into force sections of The Criminal Finances Act 2017 dealing with unexplained wealth orders (UWOs), along with various other related provisions. The purpose of this new order is to allow for certain people who obtain property which would ordinarily be beyond their obvious means, to be required to...
Redemption has always been an important part of our justice system; you do the crime, you do time. Once your debt is paid, you should then be free to start again, without forever being haunted by ghosts of the past. We all recognise that there must be limits to this principle, so if convicted...
In criminal law, we talk a lot about character, but mainly in the context of ‘bad character’, or previous convictions that the prosecution will try to put before a jury to persuade them of the defendant’s guilt. After all, if he’s done it before, he is more likely to have committed this crime too, is...
We are all aware that we live in a surveillance society. CCTV cameras can record our movements around large towns and cities, and many homes now have them installed for protection. Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras take a snapshot of car number plates and can not only monitor average speed for road traffic enforcement...
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are never far from the news, mainly when the value is rising considerably. This week the price of a single bitcoin rose to a little over £10,000. It is an odd ‘currency’, as it is not backed by any government, and certainly not by an underlying gold stock. It...
Laws that criminalise unlawful violence date back to 1861 and are used every day in criminal courts to support prosecutions. Despite what might appear to be an obvious legal position, the question is often asked as to whether, despite those laws, it is permissible to ‘smack’ a child. The simple answer is that it is...
The government has announced that it intends to bring into force a number of provisions contained in the Housing and Planning Act 2016. From 6 April 2018 the Act will allow local authorities to apply for a banning order where a landlord has been convicted of a ‘banning order offence.’ What is a banning order?...
In this article, we consider appeals against sentence from the Crown Court to the Court of Appeal. The appeal process can be complicated depending on the individual case, but here we outline the basics. Early Indications We ensure that all of our clients are given an early indication of the likely sentence range, depending on...