Commentary on Sections Offences involving police or prison officers Section 27: Term of imprisonment for murder of police or prison officer
273.Section 27 amends Schedule 21 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which sets out the principles to which section 269 of that Act requires the court to have regard when assessing the seriousness of all cases of murder, in order to determine the appropriate minimum term to be imposed in relation to mandatory life sentences. Paragraph 4 of Schedule 21 deals with the exceptionally serious cases in which the court should normally start by considering a whole life term, and provides a number of examples of cases that should normally fall into this category. This section puts the murder of a police or prison officer in the course of his or her duty into this category; previously it was dealt with in paragraph 5 of Schedule 21 as the type of case where the normal starting point would be a minimum term of 30 years.
274.Subsection (4) applies the amendment to those cases where the offence was committed on or after the date of commencement.