House debates Bill to end sentencing law contradiction

The House of Assembly earlier today debated the Penal System Reform (Amendment) Bill, aimed at ending a 26-year contradiction in sentencing law.

Under the amendment, judges may consider previous convictions at sentencing only when “directly relevant” to the current offence. Repeat fraud or repeat violence could draw harsher penalties, Nicholls said, while unrelated history, a past traffic offence in a fraud case, for instance, would stay excluded.

Introducing the bill, Minister of Home Affairs and Information Gregory Nicholls said the amendment targets Section 40 of the Penal System Reform Act, passed in 2000 and based on England’s 1991 Criminal Justice Act. Subsection 1 bars courts from treating an offence as more serious solely because of an offender’s past convictions or failure to respond to earlier sentences. Subsection 2, though, allows judges to weigh prior convictions that reveal an aggravating factor, a clash Nicholls said has never been resolved.