Prior to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 there was a presumption that a defendant’s bad character didn’t go in.
The main exceptions to that were where a defendant gave a false impression to the court about their character e.g. saying “I would never do something like this” when giving evidence, or where the defendant adduced the conviction themselves, most commonly where they have previous convictions where they have always previously pleaded guilty and they are pleading not guilty on this occasion, or something that provides important context to their defence. For obvious reasons this wasn’t exercised frequently.
Codifying and widening the scope of bad character within the CJA ‘03 was part of a series of steps that started in the ‘90s which have redressed the balance in criminal proceedings away from the defence and towards the prosecution - other notable examples are negative inferences that can now be drawn from a defendant not answering questions in interview or not giving evidence in their defence.
I think all of these steps have been broadly in the interests of justice, and they also provide some factual context to the suggestion that the justice system is increasingly stacked towards defendants when it demonstrably is not.
It’s the same with sentencing, which has been inexorably on the increase for the last 30 years or so. All these strident predictions on this thread of a suspended sentence are part of that misinformation space. There is no way this will be a suspended sentence. Not for an ABH conviction against a police officer at an airport. The judge will give him a good kicking for that, and quite right too. A clear message needs to be sent out.
