NFO Criticisms
Non-Fatal Offences Criticisms Essay
The majority of non-fatal offences are included in the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (OAPA) which was described by Professor JC Smith as ‘a rag bag of offences brought together from a variety of sources’. This view is widely shared throughout the legal system, although some argue that the law works in practise and so no reform is needed. However the law does not include the common offences of Assault and Battery, providing another call for reform. The first Bill to reform this act was put forward in the 1980s, along with more drafts in 1990s, which shows the Law Commission’s dedication to modernising the Act. Despite these obvious intentions no government has passed it as of yet.
The greatest criticism is that because the OAPA was passed in1861 the language is outdated and antiquated, which causes confusion. Words like ‘grievous’ in s20 GBH have been modernised by case law, DPP v Smith stated that grievous should mean ‘really serious harm’. However this still calls into question the severity of ‘really serious’. Another ambiguous term from s20 GBH is ‘wounding’, this was defined in Eisenhower, an example of case law improving the statute. Yet case law can also be misleading as with the word ‘immediate’ when defining Assault, in Smith v CSI Woking Police the assault was ‘sufficiently immediate for the purposes of the offence’. This was then extended in R v Ireland and R v Constanza to include phone calls and letters, so immediacy has become a very broad definition. Despite this there is a clear gap in law if a threat is made for the next day. As well as the unclear meaning of some terms, the definition of some has changed as the English language has developed over time, some words used for Non-Fatal Offences have acquired new meanings or are no longer used in everyday language, a brilliant example of this is ‘assualt’ which now, in everyday language, is used to mean a physical form of attack, which obviously
The majority of non-fatal offences are included in the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (OAPA) which was described by Professor JC Smith as ‘a rag bag of offences brought together from a variety of sources’. This view is widely shared throughout the legal system, although some argue that the law works in practise and so no reform is needed. However the law does not include the common offences of Assault and Battery, providing another call for reform. The first Bill to reform this act was put forward in the 1980s, along with more drafts in 1990s, which shows the Law Commission’s dedication to modernising the Act. Despite these obvious intentions no government has passed it as of yet.
The greatest criticism is that because the OAPA was passed in1861 the language is outdated and antiquated, which causes confusion. Words like ‘grievous’ in s20 GBH have been modernised by case law, DPP v Smith stated that grievous should mean ‘really serious harm’. However this still calls into question the severity of ‘really serious’. Another ambiguous term from s20 GBH is ‘wounding’, this was defined in Eisenhower, an example of case law improving the statute. Yet case law can also be misleading as with the word ‘immediate’ when defining Assault, in Smith v CSI Woking Police the assault was ‘sufficiently immediate for the purposes of the offence’. This was then extended in R v Ireland and R v Constanza to include phone calls and letters, so immediacy has become a very broad definition. Despite this there is a clear gap in law if a threat is made for the next day. As well as the unclear meaning of some terms, the definition of some has changed as the English language has developed over time, some words used for Non-Fatal Offences have acquired new meanings or are no longer used in everyday language, a brilliant example of this is ‘assualt’ which now, in everyday language, is used to mean a physical form of attack, which obviously