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Welcome to the Criminal Solicitor Dot Net web site
This site provides an online resource to UK criminal solicitors and includes a forum area to discuss the ever changing world of criminal law, and criminal contracting.

There are several important features of this site that cannot be accessed unless you have registered as a member and logged in to the Criminal Solicitor Dot Net site:

Case Law Updater - the Case Law updater contains cases that the Criminal Solicitor Dot Net team consider to be important/relevant to criminal practitioners. The Case Law Updater does not contain every new case, but it does contain on cases that are of paramount importance.
Legislation Updater - the Legislation Updater covers legislation created since April 2004 that is relevant to criminal law and includes items such as Statutory Instruments, Bills and Acts. The Legislation Updater allows you to peruse relevant legislation with summaries and view the full content of the legislation as published on the Office of Public Sector Information web site.
Newsletter - web site members who opt to receive the weekly Criminal Solicitor Dot Net Newsletter receive by e-mail a newsletter containing legal news, contracting news, case law updates, and legislation updates. The newsletter contains links to reports and updates contained within the Criminal Solicitor Dot Net web site.
Free CPD - The Solicitors Regulation Authority has approved the Criminal Solicitor Dot Net web site to provide CPD credits through distance learning courses.
Download Centre - this contains documents that are relevant to all areas of criminal practice and includes consultation documents and responses.

We would like to encourage all users to post questions, answers, messages in the forums sections - by sharing your knowledge you could be helping another user.

If you would like to know more about this site then please look at the FAQ section .

Recommend this site
If you find the Criminal Solicitor Dot Net site useful then please recommend it to a friend or colleague.

Questions or comments ?
If you have any questions or comments to make then please use the forums.

The Criminal Solicitor Dot Net Team.

Why is this web site here?
The Criminal Solicitor Dot Net web site was established to provide an open forum for users to discuss UK criminal law. There are several resources available to criminal solicitors on the internet but none were seen as being open or user friendly in the way that the Criminal Solicitor Dot Net portal is. Criminal Solicitor Dot Net is not affiliated with any professional organisation and has no agenda to serve - it exists as it does for the purpose of open discussion.

Who runs the web site
The Criminal Solicitor Dot Net web site is run by Gavin Burrell with the assistance of two others. Gavin Burrell is a solicitor who works for a firm in Southend, Essex, practicing solely in criminal work.

Who pays for the web site?
The portal is not operated for profit or gain and no membership fees/subscription fees are charged. The costs in operating this portal are generally absorbed by the Criminal Solicitor Dot Net team if income generated from advertising does not meet the hosting costs. The biggest cost in running the portal is time spent ensuring that up to date information is delivered to our registered users.

Discussion forums
The Criminal Solicitor Dot Net web site provides registered users the ability to read and post messages in the discussion forums. The forums are arranged in appropriate sections where a user can engage in discussion with other users about any given topic.

Criminal law
The forums are particularly useful for discussing criminal law. Requests are often made for opinions on legal scenarios, and guidance given on new or established legislation. The forums are not to be used by people seeking legal advice on their own case.

Criminal contracting
Criminal contracting is at the heart of many UK crime practices and the discussion forums allow our registered users to interact and discuss impending changes to criminal contracting.

Updater
The Criminal Solicitor Dot Net web site provides an updater service to ensure that our registered users are informed of changes to case law and legislation. The updater service is split in to two areas.

Case law
We provide a case law updater service. We endeavour to post updates to the web site on a daily basis. We report on case law that we believe to be of paramount importance to UK criminal law. We provide summaries for the cases in the updater and where judgments are freely available online for the cases a copy of the judgment also appears in the updater.

Legislation
We check legislation on a daily basis to ensure that our registered users are aware of new Acts, proposed Bills, Statutory Instruments and Draft Statutory Instruments. Without taking advantage of an updater service a criminal practitioner cannot expect to keep up to date with legislative changes. The legislative updater provides a summary of the important parts of that legislation and copies of the full text of the legislation in question.

Criminal Solicitor Dot Net Newsdesk

03 July 2009

Welcome back Guest

The Criminal Solicitor Dot Net News Desk
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Breaking news in the world of criminal law and criminal contracting

Criminal Solicitor Dot Net News	Next Update in 57 minutes.

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Lord Woolf attacks early release scheme

26 February 2009 12:45

Lord Woolf complained that while the judges were sending criminals into prison by the front door, the Government was simply "releasing them by the back door". He said that the continuation of the scheme - which was introduced in 2007 for some inmates in England and Wales to ease prison overcrowding - "doesn't make sense". Ministers insisted that the prison numbers still had not come down far enough to enable them to end the scheme, which has seen almost 50,000 offenders freed two-and-a-half weeks before their sentence was complete.

Fewer hospital admissions for stab victi...

26 February 2009 00:26

The number of stab victims being admitted to hospitals has fallen in England for the first time in four years. A total of 5,239 people were admitted in the 12 months to the end of April last year after being attacked with a knife or other sharp object, according to figures published yesterday. This is down by nearly 500 from the year before, when 5,720 victims were admitted � an 8 per cent fall. It was the first time the number of admissions had fallen since 2003-04. The three intervening years saw a steady increase in the numbers arriving at hospital with stab wounds.

Conmen who prey on the elderly to escape...

25 February 2009 01:51

Confidence tricksters who take as much as �20,000 from vulnerable victims are likely to be handed a community sentence according to planned advice by the Sentencing Guidelines Council (SGC). Even those who con as much as �100,000 from easy targets could avoid jail. The proposals, which provide advice to courts, also suggest benefit cheats who claim up to �20,000 unlawfully could be handed a community order as should criminals caught with computer programmes or technology designed for internet or credit card fraud.

Criminals could be named and shamed on l...

25 February 2009 01:49

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, is said to favour the scheme to highlight court convictions. However, Whitehall officials are reported to be concerned that it may lead to vigilantism. The scheme is being considered as part of plans to give local communities a greater role in the criminal justice system. A green paper to be published next month may also give local people the right to determine the nature of community service punishments.

Almost 7,000 criminals 'applied to be te...

25 February 2009 01:11

Brothel keepers, flashers, child beaters and even drug dealers tried to get jobs in the classroom during 2008. The convictions were uncovered in a Freedom of Information request to the Criminal Records Bureau. The CRB - a Home Office quango - is tasked with providing information on people who apply for jobs working with children or vulnerable adults.

Fight against terror 'spells end of priv...

25 February 2009 00:59

Privacy rights of innocent people will have to be sacrificed to give the security services access to a sweeping range of personal data, one of the architects of the government's national security strategy has warned. Sir David Omand, the former Whitehall security and intelligence co-ordinator, sets out a blueprint for the way the state will mine data - including travel information, phone records and emails - held by public and private bodies and admits: "Finding out other people's secrets is going to involve breaking everyday moral rules." His paper provides the most candid assessment yet of the scale of Whitehall's ambitions for a state database to track terrrorist groups. It argues that while the measures are essential, public trust will be maintained only if such intrusive surveillance is carried out within a strong framework of morality and human rights.

Britain faces summer of rage - police

25 February 2009 00:44

Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned. Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests. Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

Police failing in race reforms demanded ...

25 February 2009 00:38

The police have fallen short on three key areas of reform on race that were demanded a decade ago by the landmark Macpherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the government conceded yesterday. A government report published today admits that stop and search rates remain higher for African-Caribbean Britons than for whites, targets to recruit more ethnic minority police officers have been missed, and, if they do join, black and Asian officers are more likely to leave the service earlier than their white counterparts. The new report, which maps how different racial groups are faring in Britain, was published to mark today's 10th anniversary of the report by Lord Macpherson into the bungled investigation of the 18-year-old's murder in south London in 1993. The inquiry found institutional racism had contributed to the killers of the black teenager not being caught.

Tories promise 21st century clip round e...

25 February 2009 00:37

David Cameron yesterday downgraded the Tories' commitment to civil liberties when he declared that the sole focus of the Home Office under a Conservative government would be to tackle crime. In a sign that the party is distancing itself from the era of David Davis, the former shadow home secretary who resigned over the government's 42-day detention plan, the Tories pledged to introduce a 21st-century alternative to "a clip-round-the-ear" policing. Underlining the party's tougher approach, Cameron issued a blunt message to wayward children. "It's the Conservatives you're dealing with now," he said. "You're not going to get away with it any more." Cameron made his remarks as he introduced Chris Grayling, who was making his first speech as shadow home secretary. Grayling made clear that civil liberties would not be one of his priorities when he said: "If I am home secretary after the next election, my job is very simple - to be tough on crime. The first [priority] is to find a 21st-century alternative to what would once have been a clip around the ear from the local bobby ... If you're a young person who has ignored that new generation 'clip around the ear', you should end up in court quickly and at the very least should be doing some form of tough community service as a punishment."

Terror law watchdog Lord Carlile joi...

25 February 2009 00:35

Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of anti-terror laws, has written to the home secretary to ask her to enable computer hacker Gary McKinnon to be prosecuted in the UK rather than face extradition and a jail term in the US. The intervention comes as the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, is considering whether to prosecute McKinnon, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, under British computer misuse laws. In a letter to Jacqui Smith, Lord Carlile, QC, writing in a personal capacity, states that "there is no doubt that Mr McKinnon could be prosecuted in this country given that the acts of hacking occurred within our jurisdiction". Lord Carlile of Berriew suggests that McKinnon's condition makes a very strong case for any prosecution to take place in the UK. "Of especial importance is the opinion of Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, who describes the unusual and florid symptoms which place Mr McKinnon clearly within the category of Autism Spectrum Disorder, with potential injury to his health of a high order were he to be transferred to the US legal system," he said. He suggests that the argument that such a transfer to the US jail system could infringe European human rights laws, is "plain and strong".

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