This Act was originally published in 1861 and has undergone many amendments since, which has resulted in the Act now documenting more about its history than it does to document offences. There have been many detailed changes to the Act over the years, but much of its original structure and wording remains. While the title indicates clearly its intended scope, over the years, Parliament has passed many Acts that define other offences against the person, resulting in duplication and inconsistency across the Acts (see examples in the slide show below).In the years since the Act was published, there have also been a number of other Acts created in which offences against the person have been documented, leading to there being many similar offences with inconsistent penalties.
The UK Law Commission has made several attempts to modernise and consolidate the Acts related to offences against the person (e.g. 1993, 1994, 2004, 2015 and 2015), but Parliament has not implemented the Law Commission’s recommendations. Hence, this web site is proposing a way forward with examples of how the Act could be published. As Parliament has not initiated actions despite very strong representations from the Law Commission, it is recognised that it will be near impossible to persuade Parliament to accept a new Act that consolidates many current Acts into one new Act. Hence, we have prepared two draft Acts: one proposed Act that is a minimum change to modernise the 1861 Act, and one proposed Act that gives a strategic vision of how an Offences Against the Person Act could look in the longer term. The latter setting the framework for defining the structure for the Act that is a minimum change.
The approach to creating a minimal change to the Act focuses on:
- adopting modern terminology and language (simple English)
- introducing a new structure and sequence of sections of the Act that reflect the long term aims of the Act
- making use of modern, web based interfaces to provide screen tips and hyperlinks to help readers navigate the legislation
The approach to creating a strategic vision of the Act focused on:
- building on the approach taken for the minimal change to the Act,
- bringing all current legislation associated with Offences Against the Person into one Act
A slideshow giving some background as to how and why the proposed Acts have been developed can be found below.
The proposed minimum change to the 1861 Act can be seen here: Offences Against the Person – proposed minimum change to the 1861 Act.
A copy of the current 1861 Act, with suggestions for improvements to the Act and references to where each section is covered in the “proposed minimum change” to the Act can be found in the following file:
The proposed strategic vision for the 1861 Act can be seen here: Offences Against the Person – strategic vision of the Act.
Note:
- these proposals are proposals. Readers are asked to comment and suggest improvements.
- these proposals include many footnotes that are there to guide the reader as to the source of the information and sometimes to ask questions as to whether the proposals are appropriate.
