The Sentencing Council published updated guidelines this week, reflecting the increased maximum penalties for child cruelty offences introduced under the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Act 2022. The Act raised the maximum penalties from ten to 14 years in prison for cruelty, from ten to 14 years for causing or allowing a child to suffer serious harm, and from 14 years to life imprisonment for causing or allowing a child to die.
The council consulted on proposals to introduce a new very high level of culpability to capture the worst cases, which would help the courts take a consistent approach to sentencing. However, the guidelines do not change the factors of the high, medium and lesser culpability levels, the harm factors or the sentence levels for cases not falling into the new very high culpability category.
Under the revised guidelines, the sentencing range for causing or allowing a child to die goes up to 18 years in prison, and up to 12 years for causing or allowing a child to suffer serious physical harm.
Sentences for cruelty to a child including ill-treatment, abandonment or neglect range up to 12 years in prison.
The revised guidelines come into effect on 1 April 2023. The new maximum penalties will apply only to offences committed on or after 28 June 2022.
Sentencing Council chairman Lord Justice William Davis said: ‘Child cruelty offences are by their very nature targeted against particularly vulnerable people—children—and it is important that courts have up-to-date guidelines that reflect the penalties set by Parliament.
‘The revisions will ensure that the courts can reflect the new penalties consistently and transparently and will have available to them the full range of possible sentences when dealing with the worst cases of child cruelty.’
