ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 discusses criminal law relating to offences of non-fatal, non-sexual violence. The law in this area is a mixture of outdated statute (the 1861 Offences against the Person Act) and common law principles, and the result has been, as the chapter goes on to argue, a confusing set of offences that overlap in terms of actus reus and mens rea requirements as well as in terms of available punishment. The chapter considers current non-fatal violence offences in increasing order of seriousness, starting with common assault and battery and moving through more recent statutory offences against harassment, stalking, and coercive behaviour, to discuss actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm offences. There is also discussion of the consent defence to assault, which has again tended to operate in an inconsistent and at times discriminatory way. The chapter then considers these offences from a criminal justice perspective, noting particularly the inconsistency with which criminal justice has tended to respond to different types of violence according to the circumstances in which the violence occurred. Examples include criminal justice’s difficulties in dealing with domestic and racial violence. The chapter concludes by linking evidence back to Chapter 1’s evaluative roadmap theories.
