Serious Crime Prevention Orders dubbed ‘ASBOs for suspected criminals’ were unveiled at a press briefing by Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker yesterday.
The new civil orders are contained in the Serious Crime Bill announced in the House of Lords on Tuesday and published in the House of Commons yesterday.
They can by imposed by a judge on the basis of ‘reasonable grounds to suspect’, after weighing up the ‘balance of probabilities’.
But breaching the new order could lead to a five-year prison term.
The Serious Crime Bill includes proposals to:
• Introduce new civil Serious Crime Prevention Orders to prevent criminal activity by individuals or organisations by imposing conditions on them.
• Create new offences of encouraging or assisting another person to commit an offence.
• New powers of search and seizure of property and money believed to be associated with criminal activity
• New information sharing powers which will allow ‘data mining’ of individuals not based on intelligence or suspicion.
The Home Office said that the new measures ‘will also ensure those more loosely connected with serious criminal groups cannot avoid prosecution’.
Aimed at those allegedly ‘involved in serious crime’, the new Bill abolishes the common law offence of incitement and in its place creates new offences of ‘intentionally encouraging or assisting crime and encouraging or assisting crime believing that an offence, or one or more offences, will be committed.’
Civil Rights group Liberty expressed concern that the Bill contains ‘proposals to give courts the power to impose curfews, travel bans, bank account freezes and other measures on individuals and organisations suspected of crimes’.
Liberty warned that these measures underline ‘a dangerous government trend’ toward punishing individuals despite a lack of evidence.
Liberty’s Policy Officer Jago Russell told News Line: ‘We used to believe in hard evidence and fair trials in this country.
‘Now we dispense rapid-fire justice as quickly as the government can develop a catchy four-letter acronym for it.
‘With more than 3,000 new criminal offences passed since 1998, we should be highly suspicious of new laws passed for image rather than impact.’
Liberty also commented on the news that a third terrorist suspect being held on a Control Order is on the run.
Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, said: ‘How long before the Government recognises that the control order regime is both profoundly unsafe and unfair?
‘Under this indefinite punishment without charge, an innocent person would be driven completely mad, but equally the public could never be adequately protected from a truly dangerous terrorist.’
