The Justice Committee appreciates the
challenges faced by the Sentencing Council in estimating how new
guidelines on manslaughter will affect sentencing practice.
However, the Committee considers that the impact on correctional
resources should be quantified as early and accurately as
possible to allow the Government to factor this into planning the
custodial estate.
In its Report, which responds
to the Council’s consultation, the Committee comments on a set of
four draft guidelines on manslaughter offences published in July
2017. MPs welcome the clarity with which the Sentencing Council
has explained the structure of the new guidelines and its
rationale for the approach taken.
Committee Chair, MP, said:
“These guidelines are important as they encourage consistency
of sentencing whilst maintaining current sentencing practice for
the majority of cases. But we have concerns about the potential
impact on prison resources and think that more work should be
done to understand the effect they might have.”
Conclusions and recommendations:
- We welcome the Council’s intention to carry out further work
to determine the likely impact of the new guidelines, including
through further interviews with sentencers. However, we
recommend that the Council goes further by quantifying the impact
on correctional resources and that this estimate be published as
part of the final resource assessment.
- Taking into account the interaction between mental health
issues and alcohol/drugs abuse, described by the Ministry of
Justice as “complex”, we are not convinced of the justification
for qualifying the lower culpability of offenders with a mental
disorder in such cases. We recommend that that this
qualification be deleted from the guidelines.
- We concur with the view that sentencers should understand
that they retain discretion, where there is strong mitigation, to
impose non-custodial sentences for unlawful act manslaughter at
the lowest level of culpability. We recommend that the
guideline state this expressly.
- We consider it important that these guidelines clarity the
extent to which secondary liability cases carry a lesser
culpability than the primary offence. We recommend that
the draft guidelines be expanded to include guidance on
sentencing offenders with secondary liability for unlawful act
manslaughter.
- There is a risk of the high culpability factors proposed for
gross negligence manslaughter leading to inappropriately long
custodial sentences, especially in relation to clinical decisions
taken by medical practitioners in testing circumstances, and
situations where junior employees have little control in their
workplace environment. We recommend that the Council
reconsider the high culpability factors for gross negligence
manslaughter, taking account of these concerns.
- We conclude that it would be inappropriate to include “blame
wrongly placed on others” as an aggravating factor in gross
negligence manslaughter, without further explanation to avoid
sentencers penalising offenders who have sought to defend
themselves at trial by reasonably highlighting the role played by
others. We recommend that the Council revise the
guideline accordingly.
BACKGROUND
In May 2014, the Sentencing Council was asked by the then Lord
Chancellor to develop a guideline for so called ‘one punch’
manslaughter following public concern about the sentences in some
high-profile cases. The Council considered that it should look at
manslaughter offences in the round and undertook to do so when
time and resources allowed. There is an existing guideline for
manslaughter by reason of provocation issued by the Council’s
predecessor body the Sentencing Guidelines Council (SGC) which is
now out of date following legislative changes to the partial
defences to murder but there are no existing guidelines for any
other forms of manslaughter.
There are four draft guidelines as follows:
- Unlawful act manslaughter
- Gross negligence manslaughter
- Manslaughter by reason of loss of control
- Manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility
The Justice Committee is a statutory consultee on draft
sentencing guidelines. Its report has taken into account
the responses to the Sentencing Council’s consultation on the
manslaughter guidelines, which the Council has shared with the
Committee.
