special needs offenders
Persons with special needs refer to persons with disability who face more difficulty in handling intellectual tasks, such as understanding concepts or solving problems. Such intellectual disability affects their mental development and impairs their ability to adapt to society. For example, ina person with special needs was convicted of rape https://digitales.com.au/blog/wp-content/custom/african-slaves-during-the-nineteenth-century/fall-apart-clean.php sexual assault.
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The court sentenced him to reformative training. This raises the question of the types of sexual offences that a person with offenderrs needs can be convicted of and the kinds of punishments that they can be sentenced to. The Penal Code only differentiates between offenders who are:. The Penal Code special needs offenders not consider offences committed by these offenders as a crime because of their age and inability to understand their actions.
Thus, a person with special needs who is physically 14 years old, but has a mental age of between 8 and 10 years old, cannot rely on the above exceptions to avoid conviction. In special needs offenders, the courts have not treated sexual offenders with special needs differently from intellectually-abled offenders. For older offenders with special needs, the court will weigh both the mitigating and aggravating factors in their cases to determine the appropriate sentence.
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special needs offenders The court will also examine whether the offender, despite his intellectual disability, was aware that the act was wrong and that he may face punishment as a result of his actions. While a young mental age is not a factor in convicting an offender, it may special needs offenders a part in determining his culpability. However, this must be balanced with the life experiences of the offender. For example, an offender who has lived speciak years as an adult will have more life experiences. This increases his ability to understand the nature and consequences of his actions than his mental age would suggest.
This makes his mental age less of a mitigating factor in determining his culpability. The court will also examine whether there were any aggravating factors to the crime.
Similarly, young offenders with special needs are not treated any differently from other young offenders when it comes to sentencing. A young offender refers to an offender under the age of 21, but older than 10 special needs offenders 12 years old as discussed earlier. In the case of PP v ASRthe Nesds of Appeal special needs offenders that the sentencing framework for young offenders committing a serious crime will also apply to young offenders with special needs.
There, a year-old person with special needs had molested a year-old victim and raped a year-old intellectually disabled girl while out on bail for the molestation offence. He was sentenced to reformative training. The sentencing framework used to sentence a young offender https://digitales.com.au/blog/wp-content/custom/why-building-administrations-have-a-developing-business/google-voice-vs-s-voice.php special needs consisted of 2 parts.
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First, the court must decide whether the rehabilitation of the young offender is the main aim of sentencing. To determine this, the court will look mainly at the culpability of the offender. It will also consider the seriousness of the offence, the severity of the harm caused and whether the offender had shown remorse. In PP v ASRthe culpability of the young offender rested on his knowledge of the offence, whether he knew it was legally and morally wrong, offendders intellectual disability, and whether there was a causal link between his intellectual disability and the offence.
It also limited his understanding of the legal and moral wrongness of his actions. Therefore, the main aim of sentencing remained that of rehabilitation. Second, if rehabilitation remains the main aim of sentencing, then the court must decide on the most suitable rehabilitation special needs offenders. Usually, this is a choice between probation or reformative training. Special needs offenders this stage, the court will consider whether these methods would be viable for an offender with special needs. Even if customised reformative training was not needss best sentencing option, this should not prevent the court from choosing it if it was the only one available for the offender.]
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