The Criminal Law Act 1967
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THE CRIMINAL LAW ACT 1967
PAUL DAVIES
THE Criminal Law Act 1967 received the Royal Assent on July 21, 1967, but
Part I, the most important section, comes into effect only on January I, 1968.1
The Act has been warmly welcomed in all quarters,2 and rightly so. It
abolishes the distinction between felonies and misdemeanours and makes the
law and practice relating to the latter of general application.3 As the Criminal
Law Revision Committee, upon whose excellent report and draft bill4 the
Act is securely based, baldly stated: The distinction has become an anachro-
nism, complicating the law unnecessarily; in our opinion there is nothing to
be said for keeping it. I The Act is mainly concerned with the consequences
of the abolition.
The Report (and consequently the Act) does, however, fall foul of a
difficulty that faces all committees with limited terms of reference: at what
point is one beginning to encroach upon areas of law outside the terms of
reference? Whilst the Committee was willing to grasp the opportunity to
amend as well as merely to restate several rules of law dependent upon the
distinction and to repeal a large mass of unnecessary statute law,6 it felt, no
doubt correctly, that reform should not be attempted where questions of
policy were raised.
The vice is inherent in the system, but it had some unfortunate conse-
quences. A notable example is the reproduction without alteration in sec-
tion 2 (2) of the rule in Walters v. W. H. Smith and Son.8 The present form
of the rule is internally inconsistent in terms of policy: an honest and
reasonable belief that the arrested person committed the offence will relieve
the arresting citizen from any subsequent liability if his belief turns out to
have been mistaken on this point and this no doubt encourages citizens'
arrests. If, however, the offence in question has not been committed by any-
one, a mistaken belief on this matter, no matter how honest and reasonable,
will not avail the citizen and so he will be encouraged to call a constable I
rather than perform the arrest himself. If policy requires the law to restrict
citizens' powers of arrest,' a more rational limitation related to the nature
of the offence could surely be found. At present the rule is a trap for people
not versed in the ways of lawyers' reasoning. The citizen is entitled to expect
either that acting upon an honest and reasonable belief shall be a complete
protection or that he should be warned to call a constable whenever there is
1 S. 12 (').
2 See e.g. [x967] Crim.L.R. 495.
S. I.
4 Seventh Report Felonies and Misdemeanours (1965) Cmnd. 2659.
' Ibid. para. 4.
6 See Scheds. 3 and 4, and ss. 13, 14.
7 See also loc. cit., paras. 73-74. Committee refused to recommend for this reason that
courts should be able to combine fines with probation orders, or that assizes and quarter
sessions be given the power to fine for breach of a probation order.
8 [914] x K.B. 595.
9 The constable's wider common law powers are reproduced in s. 2 (4).
10 Per Isaacs C.J. at p. 6o6](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/bjcrim8&div=20&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Criminal Law Act 1967
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