Section 99: Qualifying offenders
596.This section specifies the criteria which must be met before a person can be eligible for a violent offender order. A person can be a qualifying offender if he is 18 or over and comes within subsection (2) or (4).
597.Subsection (2) provides that to be a “qualifying offender” one of the following conditions must have been met. The offender must have (a) been convicted of a specified offence and either given a custodial sentence of at least 12 months or a hospital order; (b) been found not guilty of a specified offence by reason of insanity; or (c) been found by a court to have a disability and to have done the act charged in respect of a specified offence. In respect of a person within (b) or (c), the court must also have made an order within subsection (3) for him to be a qualifying offender. The offence or act may have been committed before or after the commencement of this Part of the Act.
598.Subsection (4) relates to offences committed outside England and Wales, and in effect provides that the criteria listed in subsection (2)(a) apply in respect of relevant offences committed in other jurisdictions, and that those listed in subsection (b) and (c) apply in respect of equivalent findings of courts. Similarly, there must have been an order made equivalent to one mentioned in subsection (3).
599.Subsection (5) defines a relevant offence for the purposes of subsection (4) as one that was both a criminal offence in the country where it was committed, and would have constituted a specified offence if it had been committed in England and Wales. Subsection (6) provides that an act punishable under the law of a country outside England and Wales constitutes an offence under that law however it is described in that law.
600.Subsection (7) sets out that an act committed in a foreign jurisdiction, and that is an offence under that law, will be taken to be an act that would have constituted a specified offence if committed in England and Wales, unless the offender serves notice on the person applying for the order denying that this is the case, giving reasons for this and requiring the applicant to prove the condition is met. Subsection (8) allows the court to permit the offender to require the applicant to prove the condition is met without having served such a notice.
