This House of Lords Library briefing provides information in support of the House of Lords consideration of the Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL] on 27 January 2017.
Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]: Briefing for Lords Stages (176 KB , PDF)
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (1974 Act) aims to support the rehabilitation of reformed offenders by providing specific periods—subject to the sentence passed or disposal administrated—after which cautions and convictions become ‘spent’, and an individual is regarded as rehabilitated. The Bill aims to reduce the rehabilitation periods of various sentences, and introduce a rehabilitation period for sentences exceeding four years (48 months), which are currently never ‘spent’. There have been criticisms of the 1974 Act and previous governments have attempted to make changes. The most recent changes were made by section 139 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 which reduced the rehabilitation periods for both custodial and non-custodial sentences and increased the upper limit to include sentences of up to four years (and applying retrospectively).
Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]: Briefing for Lords Stages (176 KB , PDF)
On 2 December 2021, the House of Lords is scheduled to hold a short debate on a motion tabled by Lord Sharkey (Liberal Democrat). He will ask the Government what steps it is taking to protect vulnerable people from financial fraud. This article provides information about the various types of fraud committed and the scale of the problem; which groups are more vulnerable to fraud; and what is being done to tackle the crime.
British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been detained in Iran since 2016. The UK Government has called her detention arbitrary and has lobbied the Iranian Government for her release. Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, and her MP, Tulip Siddiq, have called on the Government to do more to secure her freedom.
‘Hate crime’ is used to describe a range of criminal behaviour that a victim or other person perceives to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person’s disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity. These aspects of a person’s identity are referred to as ‘protected characteristics’. There have been recent calls to extend the protected characteristics to cover sex and gender. This would see misogyny become a hate crime.
