Projects

Contempt of Court: Court Reporting

Project status: Complete

We published a report explaining and setting out our recommendations in this area on 26 March 2014. In our report we recommended: ensuring that postponement orders on court reporting are all posted on a single publicly accessible website (a similar website currently operates in Scotland), and including a further restricted service where, for a charge, … Read more >

Contempt of Court: Juror Misconduct and Internet Publications

Project status: Complete

We published a report explaining and setting out our recommendations in this area on 9 December 2013. In our report we recommended the creation of a new criminal offence for jurors conducting prohibited research. This recommendation was implemented by section 71 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 (inserting a new section 20A into … Read more >

Contempt of Court: Scandalising the Court

Project status: Complete

This historic form of contempt covers conduct likely to undermine the administration of justice or public confidence in courts and judges. In August 2012 we published a consultation paper on scandalising the court. This work was brought forward to feed into the Government’s consideration of the proposal in the Crime and Courts Bill to abolish … Read more >

Corruption

Project status: Complete

This project has been superseded by our work on Bribery. We carried out this project in response to calls from two prestigious bodies for a review of this area of the law: the Salmon Commission and the Nolan Committee. We were also very conscious of the consequences of corruption, which strikes at the root of … Read more >

Fraud and Deception

Project status: Complete

We consulted on this project in April 1999 and published our final report in 2002, along with a draft Bill. Our final report made recommendations for reforming and simplifying the law of fraud, by repealing the eight offences of deception created by the Theft Acts 1968–96 and abolishing the common law crime of conspiracy to … Read more >

Effective Prosecution of Multiple Offending

Project status: Complete

The “effective prosecution of multiple offending” project emerged from our work in Legislating the Criminal Code: Fraud and Deception. Our final report makes recommendations for changes to criminal practice and procedure to facilitate the more effective prosecution of those who have committed multiple offences. It covers offences of fraudulent trading, continuous offences (cases where there … Read more >

Simplification of the Criminal Law: Public Nuisance and Outraging Public Decency

Project status: Complete

Download the report Download the consultation The problem Public nuisance is a common law offence involving environmental danger or loss of amenity or offensive public behaviour. The related common law offence of outraging public decency involves indecent actions or displays that may cause offence to members of the public. These two common law offences were … Read more >