Sentences pumped up for lesser crimes

Prison sentences for various criminal offences will double or triple in many cases, if amendments to the Cayman Islands Penal Code are accepted by the Legislative Assembly later this month.

The proposed legislation also creates brand new criminal offences for ‘causing fear or provocation of violence’, ‘harassment’ and ‘threat to kill’. The revised law would also create a new offence for ‘gross indecency’.

Gross indecency is defined as “committing an act of gross indecency with or towards a child under the age of 16 or who incites a child under the age to do such an action with him or another person”.

The charge carries a maximum of 12 years imprisonment upon conviction.

Causing fear and harassment offences deal with the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words “with the intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him”. Those offences carry a maximum of four years imprisonment upon conviction.

Amendments to both the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code will drastically increase sentences for a number of relatively minor offences. Those include:

An increase in maximum custodial sentence upon conviction for unlawful assembly from one year to three years;

Increasing the maximum punishment for rioting from two years to four years in prison;

Increasing fines for refusing to accompany a constable who is exercising the power of search from $100 to $2,000;

Doubling the maximum sentence for affray convictions and clearing up the definition of that charge;

Convictions under the ‘idle and disorderly persons’ section that now carry a three-month prison term upon conviction would see the maximum sentence for the crime increased to four years. Also, a person is deemed to be a rogue or vagabond under the revised Penal Code if they are found at night on a closed commercial premises without a “lawful excuse”;

Drunk and disorderly persons can be imprisoned for a year upon conviction, up from the previous 30 days;

The unauthorised wearing of a uniform – which currently carries a maximum sentence of three months – would increase to four years under the new legislation.