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Criminal Justice Act 1948

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This is the original version (as it was originally enacted).

Abolition of penal servitude, hard labour, prison divisions and sentence of whipping.

1Abolition of penal servitude, hard labour and prison divisions.

(1)No person shall be sentenced by a court to penal servitude; and every enactment conferring power on a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case shall be construed as conferring power to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of this Act.

(2)No person shall be sentenced by a court to imprisonment with hard labour; and every enactment conferring power on a court to pass a sentence of imprisonment with hard labour in any case shall be construed as conferring power to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the term for which a sentence of imprisonment with hard labour could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of this Act; and so far as any enactment requires or permits prisoners to be kept to hard labour it shall cease to have effect.

(3)So far as any enactment provides that a person sentenced to imprisonment or committed to prison is or may be directed to be treated as an offender of a particular division, or to be placed in a separate division, it shall cease to have effect.

2Abolition of sentence of whipping.

—No person shall be sentenced by a court to whipping; and so far as any enactment confers power on a court to pass a sentence of whipping it shall cease to have effect.

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