Interesting Facts

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Here’s an interesting fact that might help anyone attending a Quiz Night in their local pub: In the 637 years between 1351 and 1988 all the new crimes fill just one volume of the criminal law record, Halsbury's Statutes of England and Wales.

Here’s another interesting fact that might help also: New crimes introduced since 1989 fill up three volumes of the law record.

Since Labour came to power, over 3,000 new crimes were entered on the statute books ,though many of these were ‘slipped in’ on the say-so of quangocrats without being debated in Parliament. Now the Law Commission say that since 1989 breaches of red tape that ought to have been dealt with by civil courts have been elevated into crimes and that at least 1,500 of these should now be scrapped.

More importantly, they say that no crimes should go into the statute book without full-scale Parliamentary legislation and scrutiny by MPs.

Which is how it should have been!
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Time To Change The Criminal Law

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A fundamental tenet of English law is that a defendant in a criminal court is presumed innocent until he or she has been found guilty, and I wouldn’t want to suggest that anyone tamper with this in the slightest.

Against this, some recent criminal trials seem to suggest to me that defendants often enter an innocent plea even though they may appear demonstrably guilty at the outset.

But I do think we could introduce one fundamental change in the criminal law which wouldn’t interfere with this basic tenet or with any appeals process.

The issue that arises in my mind is the sheer waste of time, effort and money that goes into some criminal trials which, if a guilty defendant had simply pleaded guilty at the beginning, could have been saved. Thus, such trials would be speedier since they would need only to consider the severity of the offences and the consequent sentences imposed.

The problem that arises is how to persuade a guilty defendant to plead guilty in the preliminary proceedings rather than waste everyone’s time in proving that a plea of innocence was untruthful.

The simple answer that comes into my mind is to disallow remission of sentences to all defendants who by pleading not guilty have thereby wasted the time of the courts and everyone else concerned.

Loss of remission in such cases might focus the minds of some guilty criminals while they still sit in police cells.
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