Martin Partington: Spotlight on the Justice System

The National Crime Agency started work on 8 October 2013. (See blog for that date).

Its launch was accompanied by the publication of a Government paper setting out a strategy for dealing with serious and organised crime.

The paper defined organised crime as including:

• drug trafficking,
• human trafficking, and
• organised financial crimes, counterfeiting, organised
  acquisitive crime and cyber crime.

The paper stated that the strategy also deals with serious crime which demands a national coordinated response, notably other fraud and child sexual exploitation.

The paper out reasons why dealing with organised crime is important.

” Organised crime is a threat to our national security. It costs the United Kingdom at least £24 billion each year, leads to loss of
life and can deprive people of their security and prosperity. Crime groups intimidate and corrupt and have a corrosive impact on
some communities. Cyber crime undermines confidence in our communications technology and online economy. Organised
immigration crime threatens the security of our borders. We regard human trafficking as a pernicious form of modern slavery.
Financial crime can undermine the integrity and stability of our financial markets and institutions.

Overseas, organised crime undermines good governance and the stability of countries of strategic importance to our national security. Organised crime groups overseas can facilitate or engage in terrorism.”

To counter this, the Government states that the aim of its strategy is:

“to substantially reduce the level of serious and organised crime affecting the UK and its interests.”

The strategy uses the framework developed for counter-terrorist work. It has four components:

• prosecuting and disrupting people engaged in serious and organised crime (Pursue);
• preventing people from engaging in this activity (Prevent);
• increasing protection against serious and organised crime (Protect); and
• reducing the impact of this criminality where it takes place (Prepare).

The Government has undertaken to publish annual reports setting out the extent to which these objectives have been achieved.

Looking at these issues from the perspective of the English Legal System it seems clear that the balance between policing activity being delivered locally to local communities – which has until recently been the predominant model – and being delivered nationally to deal with new forms of criminality is bound to change. This shift is not a question that has been widely discussed in public media.

In June 2014, the Government has started the process of giving the strategy more legal backing through the Serious Crime Bill 2014. It will be some months before this reaches the statute book. But in outline the Bill seeks to

• Improve the Government’s ability to recover criminal assets by amending the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
• Amend the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to ensure sentences for attacks on computer systems fully reflect the damage they cause.
• Create a new offence targeting people who knowingly participate in an organised crime group.
• Extend the scope of Serious Crime Prevention Orders and gang injunctions.
• Establish new powers to seize, detain and destroy chemical substances suspected of being used as cutting agents for illegal drugs.
• Clarify the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 to make it explicit that cruelty which is likely to cause psychological harm to a child is an offence.
• Create a new offence of possessing ‘paedophilic manuals’.
• Extend the extra-territorial reach of the offences in the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (and the equivalent Scottish legislation) so that they apply to habitual as well as permanent UK residents.
• Allow people suspected of committing an offence overseas under sections 5 (preparation of terrorist acts) or 6 (training for terrorism) of the Terrorism Act 2006 to be prosecuted in the UK.

For further details on the strategy, see https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/serious-organised-crime-strategy.
For details on the Bill, see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-powers-to-tackle-serious-and-organised-crime-announced