Schedules Schedule 2: Sentencing Consolidation: Pre-Consolidation Amendments Re-sentencing
As noted above, the Code will give effect to a clean sweep of sentencing law, ensuring that whenever an offender is convicted after the Code is commenced, the most recent law as consolidated in the Code is applied to them, regardless of when their offence is committed (subject to specific exceptions). The aim of the clean sweep is to avoid the need for courts to make reference to multiple historic versions of the law, and to avoid the errors that result from that requirement presently.
	The clean sweep is principally achieved through the universal change effected by section 1 (and the exceptions in Schedule 1). One example of where the clean sweep policy is not achieved by section 1 is in the case of provisions giving a court the power to re-sentence an offender.
	At present, a large number of the powers to re-sentence an offender in the Crown Court are powers for the court to deal with the offender "in any way in which he could have been dealt with for that offence by the court which made the order". The intended effect of such provisions was to ensure that where an offender is being re-sentenced by a court with greater powers than the original sentencing court (i.e. being re-sentenced in the Crown Court for an offence originally sentenced in the magistrates’ court) the re-sentencing court is limited to the same jurisdictional powers as the original sentencing court.
	While the current law achieves that effect, the current statutory wording has a further, unintended, effect which is to require the re-sentencing court to apply the sentencing law as it applied to the original sentencing court. If, for example, there has been a change to sentencing law between the original sentencing and re-sentencing, such as the introduction of a new requirement available as part of a community order, the re-sentencing court would have to continue applying the old law (and the new requirement would not therefore be available to them).
	By contrast, re-sentencing powers in the magistrates’ court are generally powers to deal with the offender "in any way in which it could deal with him if he had just been convicted by the court of the offence". This wording provides the magistrates’ courts with their present legislative powers, rather than the powers available to the original magistrates’ court.
	Schedule 2 makes a large number of amendments to ensure that whenever a court is re-sentencing they are applying the current law, and not that in force at the time of the original sentencing. In line with the intended effect of the current provisions, the amendments ensure that where the Crown Court is re-sentencing an offender who was originally sentenced by a court limited to magistrates’ courts’ sentencing powers those limits still apply to the re-sentencing court. Further, the amendments ensure that whenever an offender was convicted as a child they are re-sentenced as if at the age at which they were convicted (replicating the effect of the present law in relation to re-sentencing those convicted under the age of 18). Section 2(3)(b) also confers on the Secretary of State specific powers to remove the differences between powers of different courts to deal with offenders subject to particular sentences.
	The same changes are also made to powers to amend existing orders.
	The relevant amendments can be found at paragraphs 18(3), (4), (5), (6) and (7), 36(3), 52(2), (3) and (8), 53(2) and (3), 83(2) and (3), 100(4), (5), (8), (9), (10), (12) and (14), 101(6), 102(11) and 111(3), (5), (7), (8), (9), (10), (11), (13) and (14).