New sexual offences legislation

Department	Justice and Home Affairs
Start date	01/09/2017
End date	13/10/2017
Type of consultation	Other
Deadline for comments	13/10/2017

About the consultation

The Minister for Home Affairs is launching a public consultation to invite comments on the draft Sexual Offences (Jersey) Law 201- before it is submitted to the States of Jersey for debate.

The purpose of the draft law is to consolidate most of the sexual offences that fall within parts of Jersey's legislation into a single enactment and to strengthen the protections in the law.

One of the guiding principles was that the criminal law should not intrude unnecessarily into the private life of adults and that most consensual activity between adults in private should be their own affair, and not that of the criminal law. But the criminal law has a vital role to play where sexual activity is not consensual, or where society decides that children and other very vulnerable people require protection and should not be able to consent.

This new sexual offences law sets out to provide protection to individuals of all genders, and most particularly aims to protect children and vulnerable adults in Jersey from abuse and exploitation, and ensures that abusers can be appropriately punished.

The draft law circulated for consultation is not the finished article. It is intended that the responses to this consultation will help to ensure that the draft is further developed prior to it being lodged before the States Assembly.

The Minister for Home Affairs intends that the draft law should be lodged before the Assembly before the end of 2017, with a view to it being debated early in 2018.

We are seeking general comments on the draft law and particular views on the following four areas of the draft law: