Large retailers will be hit with bigger fines for selling knives to children in England and Wales under a new draft of sentencing guidelines published for consultation today.
The Sentencing Council proposed the new guidelines, including one for organisations and one for individuals, to ensure offenders who fail to put adequate safeguards in place to prevent these sales, either in store or online, are given the appropriate sentence.
The guidelines for organisations provide a range of fines due to the fact they cannot be sentenced to custody or community orders. These range from £500 to £1m and are dependent on the organisation’s turnover to make penalties proportionate to its size. Between 2016 and 2020, organisations were fined amounts ranging from £150 to £200,000, making the mean £10,264 and the median £2,500.
The guidelines for individuals, on the other hand, provide a range of non-custodial sentences, from discharge (where the person is released from court without any further action, but will still receive a criminal record), to high-level community order. This means combining some form of punishment with activities carried out in the community.
There are currently no sentencing guidelines for this offence. While the Sentencing Council produces guidelines which cover most of the high-volume criminal offences sentenced by courts, some offences which are new or less common do not have guidelines. The Sentencing Council therefore published the general guideline, which ensures a structured sentencing process will be followed by all courts for offences that do not have a sentencing guideline.
The new guidelines for the offence of selling knives to under-18s will ensure the courts take a consistent approach to sentencing. The Council does not expect sentences to change overall for most offenders but, for large organisations, sentences may be higher under the proposed guidelines. The consultation will run from 1 June to 24 August.
“Selling knives to children can lead to very serious consequences,” said Sentencing Council magistrate member Jo King. “There is the risk of serious physical harm to the children who buy these knives and to other people, as well as the risk of wider social harms associated with the circulation of weapons among children. A child purchasing a knife is also at risk of prosecution for possession of the knife.
“It is important that all possible safeguards should be put in place to prevent the sale of knives to children, and that the penalties for organisations are substantial enough to bring home to both management and shareholders the need to operate within the law.”
Retailers that are found selling knives to children are prosecuted by Trading Standards and are dealt with in magistrates’ courts.
Acting chair at National Trading Standards Paul Noone said: “Given the devastation youth knife crime causes, Trading Standards has campaigned hard for consistent rules to be applied in sentencing those who sell knives to children. We strongly support this move by the Sentencing Council to seek to achieve this important outcome.”
ACS CEO James Lowman said: ”It is essential that retailers have a robust age verification policy for all age restricted products. The vast majority of convenience stores do not sell knives and other bladed items, but for those who do we recommend the use of Challenge25 materials in store. We worked with RASG at the start of this year to produce specific materials referencing knives and bladed items, which are available on the RASG website.”
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