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A free weekly collection of criminal law links - for practitioners, law students, and anyone with an interest in the criminal justice system of England and Wales.
Curated by Sam Willis, a barrister at 5 King's Bench Walk.
News
'Hundreds of new officers to hunt down dirty money networks'
Hundreds of new officers will be recruited to track dirty money, disrupt organised crime networks and seize criminal assets under a major new crackdown. New officers will be deployed across police forces, the NCA and the CPS to follow the money behind serious and organised crime, including through Russian and other international money laundering networks. The new investigators will focus on going after the kingpins behind Britain’s dirty money trade. By blocking and seizing their money, we will cut off the cash that fuels organised crime, from drug trafficking and people smuggling to the sham businesses that blight our high streets.
Backed by £500 million of investment over three years from the economic crime levy, the crackdown forms part of the new Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Strategy, which sets out how the UK will make it harder for criminals to hide, move or profit from crime. It comes alongside new figures showing that almost £350 million of dirty money was stripped from criminals and over £1 billion denied in a year long crackdown on dirty money. Twenty six million pounds was returned into the pockets of victims, 2,700 illicit finance operations disrupted and convictions for money laundering have increased to almost 4,000. A significant portion of money recovered from criminals will be directed towards public services and law enforcement, ensuring that the proceeds of crime are put to work protecting the public. Almost £1 million was stripped from people smugglers and immigration offenders throughout the past year, depriving criminal gangs of the funds they use to facilitate crossings as part of a wider crackdown on illegal migration...
'Government expands crackdown on knife crime'
More than 230 areas most affected by knife crime will see more police patrols, CCTV and early prevention work as part of a knife crime crackdown across 27 police forces in England and Wales. The Home Secretary is backing local plans developed by police and councils to tackle crimes, save lives and protect local communities. Each plan will be tailored to the area. They will combine tough police enforcement activity such as enhanced police patrols, alongside programmes designed for young people most at risk of being a victim or a perpetrator of knife crime. There will also be improvements to public spaces, including better lighting and redesigning areas to prevent weapons being hidden...
Growing evidence shows that concerted action in small, targeted areas is the most effective way of driving down knife crime. This crackdown comes as new data shows 7 forces - Metropolitan Police, West Midlands Police, Greater Manchester Police, West Yorkshire Police, South Yorkshire Police, Avon and Somerset Police and British Transport Police - made real inroads into tackling an issue that has blighted communities across the country, identifying and arresting more people through the better sharing of data. Across these forces, knife-enabled robbery has plummeted by nearly a quarter (23%) since the General Election - with more than 3,600 fewer knife robberies reported. This builds on huge steps forward on knife crime since the government came into office. Overall knife crime is down by 11%, as the government continues to make progress towards its target of halving it within a decade...
Burnham to scrap plans for judge-only trials
Andy Burnham is set to scrap Sir Keir Starmer’s plans for judge-only trials in a move that could head off a backbench rebellion. The Prime Minister is considering ditching his predecessor’s proposal for judge-only courts to hear cases in which defendants face prison sentences of less than three years.
However, ministers are still planning to go ahead with proposals to remove the historic right of defendants to opt for a jury trial in a crown court. They say that removing the ability of defendants to choose a jury trial is the most effective way to reduce record backlogs of more than 80,000 cases, which are forcing some victims to wait up to five years for justice. The move would hand jurisdiction for deciding where cases are tried to magistrates, who have the power to jail offenders for up to 12 months. It would cover a category of what are known as “either way” cases, which can be tried in magistrates or crown courts and exclude serious crimes such as murder, manslaughter and rape...
Officials said no final decisions had yet been taken, but a government source said: “The right to elect for trial in the crown court is the key to reducing the backlog which is holding up the entire criminal justice system”...
'Justice minister says UK must embrace AI now for use in court and takes inspiration from Singapore'
The government has doubled down on its commitment to greater use of AI in the courtroom, with a minister urging lawyers this is now a key priority. Courts minister Sarah Sackman spoke at a City of London Law Society conference and made AI a central feature of her appearance. This came just a few days after Sackman had visited Singapore where she met senior legal, political and technology leaders to promote the UK’s legal sector and lawtech industry. Sackman told London delegates this week there was ‘no choice’ but to embrace the opportunities that come with bringing artificial intelligence into the court process...
The government believes that AI-powered law tech has the potential to cut burdensome bureaucracy, free up valuable court and judicial time, and help deliver swifter justice, but without replacing the crucial human judgment at the heart of the system. In Singapore, Sackman met with LawNet Technology Services, whose AI-powered legal assistant is now used by around 75% of its lawyers. The Ministry of Justice is now developing a raft of technologies, including a new AI-powered scheduling tool, AI transcription to support parties and judges, and AI-backed mediation software...
Cases
Fiona Hodge and Others [2026] EWCA Crim 1181
In these four cases, the court is required to consider the impact of s277A of the Sentencing Act 2020 on sentencing practice... The nature of all four cases is such that they fall within the category where sentencing judges have frequently decided that immediate custody was required because, in the words of the Imposition Guideline, “the seriousness of the offence means that appropriate punishment can only be achieved by immediate custody”. In driving cases where death or very serious personal injury is caused by serious offences of careless driving, this course has frequently been taken. In such cases there may be substantial personal mitigation in which an offender has lived a blameless and constructive life, and only ever committed one offence of carelessness with fatal or other very serious consequences. Hodge, Carter and Potgieter raise these issues. In cases where police officers have abused their public office to form sexual relationships with vulnerable victims of crime, again, this has usually been done. Cases of doing acts tending and intended to pervert the course of justice have usually also been treated in this way. The necessity for deterrence in both of these classes of case involving a public interest which goes beyond those directly involved in the crimes themselves has been held to require this. The question is whether that approach is no longer open to the courts...
... it seems to us that exceptional circumstances in this context may properly be found where the culpability of the offender or the harm caused, intended or foreseen (s63 of the Sentencing Act), or both, were exceptionally high. An exceptional circumstance may also arise where the particular nature of the offence requires sentencing to be deterrent to a degree which is exceptional. This will be quite a limited class of case. There may be other factors which apply in other cases. The exercise of weighing those has been described in Nancarrow at [19(4)] at [17] above as requiring a “holistic” approach, which only means, we think, that all relevant factors must be taken into account to determine whether the case involves “exceptional circumstances”...
Does this mean “exceptionally high for the offence charged” or does it just mean “exceptionally high”. If it is the former then the level of harm in a case of causing death by careless driving is not exceptionally high because it is an element of all such offences. If it is the latter, then the court may be tempted to say that all offences involving causing death result in exceptionally high harm and therefore involve “exceptional circumstances”... In our judgment, the fact of death in a case of causing death by careless driving is not irrelevant when considering whether the case involves exceptional circumstances, but it will not be decisive if it is the only factor which could be so described. When looking at the case “holistically” it is a factor to which the court will have regard in conjunction with other relevant circumstances...
We emphasise that in all decisions of this kind the court must be scrupulous to identify factors which truly render the case “exceptional” for the purposes of s277A, and must explain what they are...
Other
'Public consultation on the Code for Crown Prosecutors'
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is consulting publicly on a revised edition of the Code for Crown Prosecutors (the Code)...