introduction

• in the 1980s, and 1990s, there were many reports on the non fatal offence law. All reports emphasised the need for reform. police recorded crime showed a 4 percent increase in violence against the person offences in 2020 from 2019
• the main areas of concern raise questions of justice and the balance between the different crimian offenses and their potential punishment while relying on the judges' decisions to correct the balance:

  1. There are too many narrowly defined offences about the same subject
  2. Some sections appear to create multiple different offenses
  3. The order and grading of the offences by seriousness is unclear.
  4. The sentencing doesn't match the severity of many of the offences
  5. The vocabulary used is very old and needs to be modernized