Causing Serious Harm in UK Law

"The second question you have to decide: 'Was the driving that caused those injuries reckless?' If so, then it is manslaughter. If you are not satisfied that it was reckless, then the verdict is not guilty. To amount to reckless driving mere negligence is not enough. His conduct must go beyond the question of compensation between citizens and amount to, in your view, criminal conduct requiring punishment.

If a person is a party to a violent attack on another, without an intent to assist in the causing of death or really serious harm, but the violence escalates and results in death, he will be not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.

What matters is whether D2 encouraged or assisted the crime, whether it be murder or some other offence. He need not encourage or assist a particular way of committing it, although he may sometimes do so. Knowledge or ignorance that weapons generally, or a particular weapon, is carried by D1 will be evidence going to what the intention of D2 was, and may be irresistible evidence one way or the other, but it is evidence and no more.

No doubt each offence of this nature contributes to a serious and perhaps widespread problem. However, the issue under s.117D(2)(c)(ii) is whether the offender has been convicted of ‘an offence’ which has caused serious harm. We accept that an individual offence of this sort can be said to cause serious harm, but there has to be some evidence that it has done so.

In considering that wider question the matters to which a judge will invariably have to have regard to include (1) the extent to which the offender needs treatment for the mental disorder from which the offender suffers, (2) the extent to which the offending is attributable to the mental disorder, (3) the extent to which punishment is required and (4) the protection of the public including the regime for deciding release and the regime after release.

(iii) If the foreseen specified offence is serious, there will clearly be some cases, though not by any means all, in which there may be a significant risk of serious harm. But it can be committed in a wide variety of ways many of which do not give rise to a significant risk of serious harm. Sentencers must therefore guard against assuming there is a significant risk of serious harm merely because the foreseen specified offence is serious.

The huge variety of offences in Schedule 15, includes many which, in themselves, are not suggestive of serious harm. Repetitive violent or sexual offending at a relatively low level without serious harm does not of itself give rise to a significant risk of serious harm in the future. There may, in such cases, be some risk of future victims being more adversely affected than past victims but this, of itself, does not give rise to significant risk of serious harm.