Three crime-fighting bills became law this week, the Home Office reports.
All the bills received Royal Assent on Wednesday, which is the final step in the process of becoming law. They are the Police and Justice Act, the biggest of the three; the Fraud Act; and the Violent Crime Reduction Act.
The Police and Justice Act will affect how police work, according to the Government; it will: establish a National Policing Improvement Agency;create standard powers for community support officers, to provide nationwide consistency;allow the Home Secretary to intervene directly;at airports expanding stop and search rights for police.
This Act applies in England and Wales, and some provisions in it also extend to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Policing Minister Tony McNulty welcomed the Act, saying it will help give police the legal powers they need to tackle both minor and serious crime: "Giving community support officers and other agencies the powers they need to respond to anti-social behaviour, low-level crime and truancy forms a central part of the measures outlined in this legislation, and will play a key role in our ongoing work to safeguard our communities."
Violent Crime Reduction Act
This Violent Crime Reduction Act gives police and communities stronger powers, according to the Government, to tackle violent crimes involving alcohol, knives and imitation guns. It doubles the maximum penalty for possession of a knife from two years in prison to four years, and gives local authorities the right to charge alcohol vendors for the costs of fighting alcohol-related crime in areas with serious crime problems. The Act also gives school staff the right to search pupils for weapons. The Act will create ‘drinking banning orders’, which impose restrictions on those who commit offences while drunk, and can ban them from frequenting businesses that sell alcohol; allow police to ban people with previous records of alcohol-related offences from visiting pubs and bars in a certain area. Inside this Act is the already-reported exemption of in-house sports stadium stewards from SIA licences after lobbying by football and other sports.
Fraud Act
The Act replaces the old, what the Home Office calls overly complicated laws. It establishes specific offences for possessing items used to commit fraud, and for making or supplying equipment that can be used to defraud. It makes it illegal to commit fraud by: pretending to be somebody you’re not, or to be doing you don’t do, or selling something or haven’t got; failing to tell people the truth about what you’re doing; andabusing your position in order to defraud.
