High Court
| Published date | 01 April 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002201830206600202 |
| Date | 01 April 2002 |
| Subject Matter | High Court |
High
Court
Imprisonment on Conviction of Crime and
Imprisonment for Contempt
Harris
v
Harris
[2001] 3 WLR 765
Following divorce, the applicant was made subject to a
number
of
injunctions restricting his access to his former wife
and
to their three
children. He appealed against those injunctions,
but
they
were
upheld
on appeal. He thereafter made applications to purge his
contempt
after
he
had
been
sentenced to 10
months'
imprisonment for repeated
breaches of the injunctions,
but
those applications were also dismissed.
In
the
present proceedings, he applied once more to purge his contempt
but
(no
doubt
expecting to fail) he also applied for an order for his
immediate release
on
the basis
that
the
prison sentence (of which he
had
served three months) should stand,
but
that
the remainder of
the
term
should be ordered
to
be suspended. The question which this application
raised was
whether
the
court
had
jurisdiction at
that
stage to
make
the
order suspending
the
operation of
the
unserved balance.
RSC Ord. 52, r. 7 (1) empowers
the
court to direct
that
the
execution
of an order of committal shall be suspended for such period
on
such
terms
and
conditions as the court
may
specify. The powers of
the
High
Court
to
suspend asentence of imprisonment for contempt of court
and
the
power
to
impose conditions
and
the
power
to
discharge from
custody are
not
statutory powers
but
are powers
inherent
in the court at
common
law. The regulations which apply to imprisonment following a
conviction of crime have
never
been
expressly or by necessary implica-
tion applied to a committal for contempt of court: see
Villiers
v
Villiers
[1994] 1 WLR 494 at 498. The Home Secretary's
power
to
release
prisoners sentenced after conviction of crime (which is subject to
the
terms of
the
PACE
Act 1984, as
amended
by the Crime
and
Disorder Act
1998) have
not
been
applied
to
persons committed for
contempt
unless
there are exceptional circumstances which justify the release on com-
passionate grounds (see Criminal Justice Act 1991, s. 36( 1)). Before the
Contempt
of Court Act 1981 imposed a
term
of two years' imprison-
ment,
the
practice was to sentence to an indefinite
term
until he
had
purged his contempt
and
apologised to the court, apractice followed
before s. 14( 1) of
the
1981 Act: see
Griffin
v
Griffin
[2000] 2 FLR 24. (It
is to be noted
that
in
the
case of a suspended term following a conviction
of crime
the
court
may
on suspending the term 'substitute an alternative
penalty instead")
The issue (of the court's jurisdiction to suspend part of the term in
the
present case) arose from the fact
that
neither the legislation
nor
the
judicial authorities state
that
ajudge on releasing a
contemnor
may
do
so on terms that, for
any
further contempt, he may be recalled to prison
by the reactivation of
the
balance of the original
term
under
the com-
mittal order (which, before 1991, would have
meant
indefinitely). It
102
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