Source · Select Committees · Women and Equalities Committee
Recommendation 16
16
Deferred
Require Sentencing Council to include motivations of honour as an aggravating factor in domestic abuse guideline
Recommendation
It is reassuring to hear judges have robustly rejected any attempts to use ‘honour’ to reduce a sentence. Explicitly recognising so-called honour in sentencing guidelines would go further; it would strengthen the understanding that honour-based abuse is taken seriously by the criminal justice system and only ever as an aggravating factor. We recommend the Sentencing Council considers including motivations of honour as an aggravating factor in the domestic abuse guideline. (Paragraph 89) 43
Government response summary AI-generated
The government states that the independent Sentencing Council has been alerted to the recommendation and will consider including motivations of honour as an aggravating factor as part of a planned review of the domestic abuse guideline.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
As recognised by the Committee, the ‘domestic abuse overarching guideline’ makes clear that HBA is a form of domestic abuse. This makes the offending more serious because it represents a violation of the trust and security that normally exists between people in an intimate or family relationship. The Sentencing Council is independent of Government and decides its own priorities and work plan for producing and amending guidelines. The Council has been alerted to this recommendation and will be considering whether the existing reference to HBA requires any amendment as part of a planned review of the guideline. We will continue to engage with them on this important matter. 1 https://www.virtual-college.co.uk/resources/free-courses/recognising-and-preventing-fgm 2 https://www.virtual-college.co.uk/resources/free-courses/awareness-of-forced-marriage 3 Multi-agency statutory guidance on female genital mutilation - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 4 Multi-agency statutory guidance for dealing with forced marriage and multi-agency practice guidelines: Handling cases of forced marriage (accessible version) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 5 Female genital mutilation: resource pack - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 6 Forced marriage resource pack - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 7 First response | College of Policing 8 Commissioning services to tackle violence against women and girls - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 9 Tackling violence against women and girls strategy - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 10 Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) 11 Supporting male victims - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
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