Legislation will increase sentences for the most serious and
violent offenders and ensure the timely administration of
justice.”
The purpose of the Bill is to:
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● Cut crime, better protect the public and support our police
with new powers and tougher sentences to tackle serious
violence.
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● Build public confidence in our criminal justice system and
uphold the rule of law with new powers to stop highly
disruptive protests, tackle unauthorised encampments, and
reform bail to better protect victims and witnesses.
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● Improve the efficiency of justice by modernising our courts
and tribunals, creating resiliency and improving the
experience of victims, witnesses, and court users.
The main benefits of the Bill would be:
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● Protecting the public by giving police the tools they need
to tackle crime and disorder, and ensuring justice and the
protection of the public by extending the length of time
spent in prison by serious and dangerous offenders.
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● Protecting the police and other emergency workers who keep
the public safe, with longer sentences for those who assault
them and a new Policing Covenant to help ensure we take
better care of our police officers and staff.
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● Better protecting the rights of the law-abiding majority by
providing the police with the necessary powers to deal with
highly disruptive protests and tackle unauthorised
encampments that cause nuisance and misery for local people.
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● Creating a more resilient, accessible, and efficient court
system by allowing courts to make use of new technology as it
develops, making permanent the provisions for participants in
criminal hearings to attend remotely, and allowing deaf
people to serve on juries for the first time.
The main elements of the Bill are:
● Introducing tougher sentences for offences such as rape,
manslaughter and wounding with intent to cause Grievous Bodily
Harm by ending the automatic release at the halfway point for
serious sexual and violent offenders sentenced to a standard d
eterminate sentence of between 4 and 7 years. This will bring
their release point in line with serious violent and sexual
offenders sentenced to 7 years or more, following the secondary
legislation we introduced in April last year.
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● Increasing the maximum prison sentence for assaulting an
emergency worker from 12 months to two years and creating a
statutory requirement for the Home Secretary to report
annually on progress made against the Police Covenant.
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● Strengthening community sentences to cut crime by providing
appropriate punishment addressing drivers of offending.
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● Placing a duty on
services to work together to prevent and reduce serious
violence, and the introduction of Serious Violence Reduction
Orders. These will be used to prevent serious violence by
equipping the police with new powers to
stop and search those convicted of knife and offensive
weapons offences.
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● Extending the scope of offences in the Sexual Offences Act
2003 relating to the abuse of positions of trust legislation
to capture additional roles, such as sport coaches and
religious leaders.
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● Balancing the rights of protesters with the rights of
others to go about their business unhindered, by enabling the
police to better manage highly disruptive protests.
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● A new criminal offence to target trespassers using vehicles
to reside on land who are causing significan 
communities.
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● Creating the necessary basis in legislation for the
providers of Secure Schools to operate this new form of youth
custodial institution that is designed to place education at
the heart of youth custody in order to cut crime.
Territorial extent and application
● The Bill will extend to the whole of the UK, with substantive
provisions applying in the main to England and Wales, with some
provisions also applying to Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Key facts
● The Government is committed to delivering its manifesto target
to recruit an
local authorities, the police, criminal justice agencies, health
and fire and rescue
● Reforming pre-charge bail so that bail conditions, such as
prohibiting contact, are
used more
effectively
to better protect victims and witnesses.
t damage or significant disruption to local
additional 20,000 police officers by 31 March 2023 – the biggest
police recruitment drive in decades. Over 8,700 extra officers
have been recruited as at 31 March 2021, exceeding the target for
the first year of the recruitment campaign.
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● On 4 February 2021, we published a total police funding
settlement for England and Wales of up to £15.8 billion in
2021-22, an increase of up to £600 million compared to
2020-21. This includes Government grants to Police and Crime
Commissioners (including police core grant, counter-terrorism
funding and pensions grant), funding through local council
tax precept and funding for national priorities, such as
tackling serious and organised crime.
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● Assaults on a constable with injury increased by 5 per cent
between September 2019 and September 2020 to 11,484 assaults
and without injury 14 per cent (to 23,549) over the same
period.
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● There were 698 victims of homicide in the year ending
September 2020, a 7 per cent increase (from 655) with the
previous year. The homicide incidence rate remains very low
at 12 per 1 million people in the year ending September 2020.
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● There were 621 adult offenders overall sentenced to a
Standard Determinate Sentence (SDS) of 4-7 years in 2019 for
the offences in scope of our proposed changes to release to
the two-thirds point, representing 11 per cent of all SDS
given for this sentence length.
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● Knife crime has been rising in recent years, but had begun
to fall before the pandemic, and the COVID-19 restrictions
have helped suppress it. Our efforts to cut crime were taking
effect before the pandemic, but there remains much more for
us to achieve.
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● Local authority responses provided data in response to the
2018 consultation on the number and scale of unauthorised
encampments – these range from low numbers to over 150 across
the previous two years in larger local authority areas.
