Beltrami & Company Criminal Law & Glasgow Solicitors Blog

Children’s charity, Just For Kids Law, this week challenged the way 17-year-olds are treated when detained by the police in England and Wales

European justice ministers meeting in the Council of the European Union last week reached agreement on proposals for a Directive on insider dealing and market manipulation that will criminalise such behaviour.

The Crown Office has reported that the Civil Recovery Unit is to recover £5.6 million under Proceeds of Crime legislation after a Scottish drilling company accepted that it had benefited from unlawful conduct.

Scotland’s Chief Statistician has published information on crimes of homicide as recorded by the police in Scotland in 2011-12.

The Lord Advocate has reported on the success of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012.

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed, in a unanimous decision, the importance of the ancient common law writ of habeas corpus, human rights organisation JUSTICE has announced.

Scotland’s Chief Statistician has published Domestic Abuse Recorded by the Police in Scotland, 2010-11 and 2011-12. The publication presents key statistics on the number of incidents of domestic abuse recorded by police forces in Scotland.

The Scottish Government has announced that it is to introduce a statutory human trafficking criminal aggravation. This will mean that existing criminal offences will be able to be ‘aggravated’ in future if it can be proved that the underlying offence was committed in connection with human trafficking.

The Home Secretary has announced that Gary McKinnon will not face extradition to the US.

The Law Societies of Scotland, England and Wales and of Northern Ireland have issued a call for a full and open consultation on whether the UK should opt-out of over 130 EU criminal justice measures, including the European Arrest Warrant.

Human Rights organisation Liberty is seeking to intervene in the High Court in proceedings against the Government and Director for Public Prosecutions for not allowing Babar Ahmad (accused of setting up terrorist fundraising websites and detained for eight years without charge) to be prosecuted in the UK.

Recent research has found that the majority of people support tagging criminals. Three quarters of the public (72%) support tagging prisoners out on parole until the end of their sentence, while nearly two thirds (64%) support the use of ankle tags for those serving a community sentence.

Scotland's Chief Statistician has published details on reconviction rates in Scotland for the 2009-10 offender cohort.

The Scottish Human Rights Commission and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission have urged the United Nations to scrutinise the UK Government’s intention to replace the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights.

The Commissions’ are giving evidence with the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the UK’s human rights record as part of the Universal Periodic Review process, where the UK is examined every four years by the Human Rights Council.

The joint submission also calls on the UK government to:

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has given its Chamber judgment in the case of James, Wells and Lee v. the United Kingdom.

The latest police campaign, coordinated by the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS), to detect unlicensed and uninsured drivers has resulted in over 100 vehicles being seized.

The campaign, which ran for three days in August, detected 248 driving offences in total, with 179 relating to uninsured drivers and 69 to driving license offences.

Those caught included a 20-year-old man from Glasgow who was arrested and charged with a variety of offences, including theft of a motor vehicle, dangerous driving, drink driving (he was almost three times the legal limit), disqualified driving and no insurance.

A man from South Lanarkshire was stopped by police, and subsequent police checks revealed he had a number of outstanding means warrants for Road Traffic offences (including driving without insurance or a licence) amounting to £970 worth of warrants.

Preparations have begun in a process to seek justice for survivors of historic child abuse in Scotland.

The Scottish Human Rights Commission with the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland (CELCIS) have launched a website ahead of an ‘InterAction’ meeting to take place in October.

The InterAction will bring together former residents, representatives of institutions, government and others with responsibility to consider how recommendations made by the Commission in 2010 can be taken forward in practical and meaningful ways. The aim is to develop an Action Plan for justice within a human rights context.

In 2010 the Commission developed a Human Rights Framework for the design and implementation of a comprehensive and progressive process of justice for survivors of historic child abuse. The Human Rights Framework is based on international human rights law, including European and United Nations human rights treaties, research on the views of survivors and others whose rights were affected, and experiences from several different countries.

The Framework is a best practice model and holds great potential in providing justice for abuse survivors. Amongst the central recommendations in the Framework are that the Scottish Government:

A man from Nottingham who was sentenced to prison after the riots that took place last year intends to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights, reports the BBC.

The 22-year-old was sentenced to three years in prison for violent disorder but, according to his lawyer, the conviction is a breach of his human rights as he is innocent of any wrong doing. The man claims he was in the area to get some food, and only ran because a large group of people, who were being chased by police, were running towards him.

Speaking to the BBC, his lawyer said: "[But] it is very likely this case will be taken to the European Court as a test case, to ask if the correct levels of proof were applied and if people should be guilty by association."

A new Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service ‘Metal Theft Policy’ has been issued in response to the increasing incidence of metal theft due to a rise in scrap metal value.

The Network for Police Monitoring (NetPol) has published a new report, which claims that police forces across the UK are adopting a hard line 'total policing' approach to handling protests, which is restricting the right to protest.

The report also claims that the use of police tactics such as 'kettling', stop and search and pre-emptive arrests have effectively prohibited most forms of popular street protests.

Val Swain, commenting on the report’s launch on behalf of NetPol, said: