Guernsey Press

As society changes so must its laws

IN MAY 2011 it was estimated that it would take just seven months to draft a new law on sexual offences.

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Included in that estimate were the services of a drafting lawyer for four months and then three months to consult parties such as the Home Department, Probation Service and the police.

Seven years on, we are promised that the first stage of that process is coming to an end.

Let us hope the second stage does not take another seven years.

Such extraordinary delays with drafting new laws are so commonplace in the Bailiwick that they dull the outrage. Nobody expects swift, efficient delivery so, as the years tick by, the complaints are muted.

Yet it should not be so.

The States was told in 2011 that there was a clear need to modernise and reform the law. Much of it was written in French and dated back as far as 1909, when attitudes towards children, women and sexual practices were very different.

Society has moved on from the Edwardian era when the Loi pour the punition d’inceste was drafted and modern attitudes to issues raised by the Loi relative a la sodomie have thankfully changed beyond all recognition.

Deputies were also warned that because the UK had enacted a new sexual offences law in 2003 the island was falling increasingly far behind other jurisdictions.

That has only been exacerbated by the technological advances made in the last two decades and the advent of online grooming and other internet crimes.

But, as with the rights for people with disabilities, the wait for a practical legal framework has been interminable.

With each month that passes, children and adults are at risk of being abused or being treated poorly by the island’s justice system.

A modern, just, society must do more than simply aspire to laws that reflect its values. It needs them to be drafted, enacted and implemented. And it needs that process to be swift.

Yes, the law is complicated, but that cannot be an excuse for delays of this magnitude. And often it is not the lawyers but the politicians and civil servants who are responsible for delays.

All should now focus on a speedy implementation of the new law.