Move to give all victims of crime right to appeal soft sentences

THOUSANDS of victims of crime currently denied the right to appeal “soft” sentences should be allowed to do so, says the department commissioner, as she calls today for a shake-up of the law.

Dame Vera Baird, a former solicitor general and police and crime commissioner, warned that up to a third of victims of serious crimes are currently refused a legal right to appeal “unduly lenient” sentences.

This is because the offences are not included in a statutory scheme which enables victims to ask the Attorney General for a review of a jail term imposed on their attacker or abuser that they believe is unduly lenient.

Calling for a major overhaul, Dame Vera cited crimes such as causing death by careless driving, domestic abuse in the form of coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and possession of indecent child images.

Victims who have been denied the right to appeal include Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman, whose mother was killed by a careless driver, and the families of toddlers whose naked images were distributed to paedophiles by nursery nurse Vanessa George.

It emerged last week that George, who was imprisoned in 2009, is due for release after the parole board decided she was no longer a significant risk.

Dame Vera said: “The point of the unduly lenient sentence scheme when it was introduced over 30 years ago was to make sure someone who had been deeply affected by crime could ask the Attorney General to consider whether the sentence handed down by a trial court was unduly lenient. There has never been a systematic review and there are now obvious cases which should be included.”

She also called for a new legal duty on prosecutors to alert victims to the scheme after cases in which people had been left unaware of it.

In one case, a prosecutor failed to alert the family of a young boy who was killed by a driver going 80mph through a zebra crossing because he thought the sentence was appropriate.

Dame Vera wants the new statutory

‘There has never been a systematic review and there are now obvious cases which should be included’

victims’ code to require that “victims must not be kept in the dark about its existence”.

“The Government is in the process of reviewing the code and I will be pressing for this change,” she said.

There were requests to increase 3,499 Crown Court sentences in England and Wales between 2015 and 2018. About a third were dismissed because they were not eligible for review. Only 643 of the 3,499 reached the Court of Appeal, with 478 – 14 per cent of the total – resulting in harsher punishments.

Harry Fletcher, director of the Victims Rights Campaign, said: “The scheme must keep up with the times.”

A spokeswoman for the Attorney General said they were committed to reviewing the scope of the scheme and this was currently being considered.