MINISTER FOR Justice Alan Shatter has just published the draft criminal code prepared by the Criminal Law Codification advisory committee.
The code attempts to draw the law together on various crimes from different sources, including statutes going back centuries and common law prohibitions, into a single charter.
Interested parties may now make submissions which will be considered by the Department of Justice when it decides how to proceed with the draft code. The advisory committee was established on a statutory basis in February 2007, but has been working on the project since 2004.
It was set up following a report from an expert group on the need for codification of the criminal law, chaired by Finbarr McAuley, a member of the Law Reform Commission and until recently professor of law in UCD.
According to a 2003 report from the expert group on the need for such codification, the lack of such a systematic approach had resulted in “serious problems posed by the haphazard, unsystematic and disorganised state of the sources of criminal law”.
The 2003 report recommended a pragmatic approach, incorporating recently enacted legislation while developing new legislation in other areas, such as homicide.
The codification report also recognised sentencing and criminal procedure should be outside the criminal law code, possibly having their own charters.
A substantial amount of criminal law derives from the common, or judge-made, law tradition and the report stressed the importance of preserving judicial discretion and flexibility while pressing on with codification.
Codification would mean that eventually all criminal law would be based on statutes adopted by the legislature. This would be developed on a phased basis.
The draft just published is a partial criminal code covering such areas as non-fatal offences against the person; theft and fraud offences; criminal damage and public order offences. According to the department, the draft is being published to allow interested parties submit views as to the advantages or disadvantages of implementing a code of this type.
The draft code is on the department website (justice.ie), and interested parties may make submissions by post or e-mail to criminalcode@justice.ie