Blog
Kingsley Napley’s Medical Negligence Team ‘walks together’ with the Dame Vera Lynn Children’s Charity
Sharon Burkill
15 May 2018
Dangerous Dogs Act under review – is it fit for purpose?
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee has been tasked with reviewing whether the current Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 legislation is fit for purpose. This follows recent statistics which suggests that the current legislation, aimed at reducing dog attacks, has monumentally failed, with figures from 2015 suggesting that hospital admissions related to dog attacks has risen 76% from the same period ten years previously.
4 May 2018
Sexting: “Outcome 21” - a solution or part of the problem?
The increase in young people sexting cannot have escaped the attention of even the most ostrich like parents. The temptation not to think about and deal with these issues is irresistible for many parents. Those parents do so at their peril because data from police forces published in November 2017 shows a surge in children sharing or possessing sexual images of themselves or others - now politely referred to as “Self-Generated Images” – with over 6200 incidents reported last year being an increase of 131% from 2014/2015. Thankfully, an initial analysis shows that the number of children being charged in these cases has more than halved.
12 April 2018
Youth Justice Part Two: Mini sex offenders or just kids?
Following the first blog in our mini-series on youth justice, in which we provided a brief guide to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act for young people, we address in this blog the issue of whether children are considered mini sex offenders or 'just kids' and what developments may be on the horizon in 2018.
5 April 2018
Tongue splitting, ear removal and branding - the limits of consent as a defence to extreme body modification
Split ‘lizard’ tongues, tattooed eyeballs, genital beading and ear shaping are just a handful of unconventional body modification procedures people undergo in the UK every day. In March 2018, the Court of Appeal found that certain body modification procedures did in fact amount to serious harm and wounding, and that the customer’s consent could not amount to a defence for causing these ‘injuries’. In light of this, practitioners currently carrying out these procedures may need to revaluate their practises.
29 March 2018
Youth Justice Part One: Criminalising kids - a guide to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act for young people
In this first blog in a mini-series on youth justice, we provide a a brief guide to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act for young people. This includes addressing the issues of how long criminal records need to be disclosed for and the impact on applying for employment or further education, filtering rules for criminal records certificates and recent developments.