Teenage killers face twice as long in jail
TEENAGE killers face twice as long in prison under a new “Ellie’s Law” sentencing crackdown to be unveiled by the Justice Secretary this week.
Robert Buckland will announce new laws under which teenage killers guilty of the most serious murders will be jailed for at least 27 years compared with the current minimum of 12 years.
He will also abolish the right of 17year-olds who are jailed after they turn 18 to have their sentences reviewed halfway through their prison terms, forcing them to serve the full terms in jail.
The move is designed to treat older teenage killers more like adults and will mean that Thomas Griffiths, who stabbed his ex-girlfriend Ellie Gould to death in the kitchen of her home, will lose his right to have his 12-year sentence reviewed at the halfway point.
Griffiths was 17 when he stabbed Ellie, also 17, at least 13 times before calmly returning to classes. Ellie’s parents, Carole and Matthew, have campaigned for “Ellie’s Law”, which would treat young offenders more like adults if convicted of murder.
The family was unhappy with proposals set out in a White Paper last year because they felt they would not make any difference to crimes such as Griffiths’s case. They did not want their daughter’s name associated with the proposed law unless it was amended.
Now Mr Buckland has come forward with changes that would mean Griffiths would have faced a minimum of 14 years in jail – and would lose his right to a review of his sentence. “It is not just about Ellie’s Law. It is a wider issue about the way we actually approach what is the most serious crime,” Mr Buckland said. He also said that he will review the law on apparent “spur of the moment” killings where a sentence is
reduced because a killer, like Griffiths, does not take a knife to a murder with the intention to kill.
Mr Buckland is proposing that instead of the blanket minimum of 12 years in jail for killers under 18, there will be a sliding scale whereby children aged 10 to 14 will face minimum starting points for their sentences set at 50 per cent of the adult equivalent.
For children aged 15 and 16, it will be 66 per cent of the adult sentence, and for 17-year-olds, it will be 90 per cent.
There are four categories, with the most serious murders involving sadism, sexual motives or killing of a police officer at the top. Whereas an adult faces a minimum of 30 years, the scale means 17-year-olds face a minimum of 27 years in jail, 15 and 16-year-olds 20 years and younger children 15 years. Unpremeditated “category four” killings will carry a minimum of 14 years for 17-year-olds, 10 years for 15 and 16-year-olds and eight years for 10 to 14-year-olds.
Mr Buckland said the aim was to create a “more subtle gradation where by the time you get to 17 you are going to be in a position where it is not that different from an 18-year-old”. He said he believed it was also justified to remove the right to a halfway review of sentences for 17-year-old killers who turn 18 at sentencing and rolling two-yearly reviews for under-18s. “If someone is sentenced after the age of 18, they should not have a review because you are not a child,” he said. “You are in your mid-20s or more and you are in fact having the same right as if you were still a child. I struggle with that.”
He said a review of premeditated versus “spur of the moment” killings was more complex. While he accepted someone who did not go armed to a killing might still have had an intent and could deserve a longer sentence, a change in the law could mean unduly harsher sentences for, say, abused women who use a weapon “on the spur of the moment” against a violent partner.