GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM
Offences against the person act 1861)
There are three basic types of assault offence set out in law – common assault, actual bodily harm (ABH) and wounding / grievous bodily harm (GBH). They are primarily defined by the harm caused to the victim – with common assault at the lower end of harm and GBH at the upper end.
They cover everything from threatening words to a severe physical attack that leaves the victim permanently disabled.
Grievous Bodily Harm covers two offences:
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Unlawful wounding or inflicting grievous bodily harm (section 20, Offences against the person act 1861)
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Causing grievous bodily harm with intent to do grievous bodily harm/Wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm (section 18, Offences against the person act 1861)
Unlawful wounding or inflicting grievous bodily harm (section 20)
Grievous bodily harm means really serious physical harm although it does not have to be permanent or dangerous. It can also comprise psychiatric injury or someone passing on an infection, such as through sexual activity.
Wounding requires the breaking of the skin, or the breaking of the inner skin (eg within the lip) but does not include the rupturing of blood vessels. Although a minor wound would therefore technically come under this offence, in practice the CPS is unlikely to charge it under s.20 However, the injuries involved in a wounding are of a lesser nature than those in GBH, so there can be quite some difference in the level of sentence for these two categories of injury.
The injury must be inflicted directly or indirectly by some deliberate or reckless conduct by the offender that was not an accident.
A section 20 offence requires either an intent to do some kind of bodily harm to another person or recklessness as to whether any such harm might be caused. So even if minor harm was intended but serious injury resulted, someone could be charged with this offence.
The maximum sentence for this offence is five years and cases can be heard in the magistrates’ or Crown Court.
Causing grievous bodily harm with intent to do grievous bodily harm/Wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm (section 18)
This is the most serious of the assault offences and involves situations in which someone intended to cause very serious harm to the victim.
An offence may take one of four different forms, namely:
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wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm;
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causing grievous bodily harm with intent to do so;
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maliciously wounding with intent to resist or prevent the lawful apprehension etc. of any person; or
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maliciously causing grievous bodily harm with intent to resist or prevent lawful apprehension etc. of any person.
The difference between this offence and a section 20 offence as above is that in a section 18 offence, the offender must have intended to cause serious bodily harm to the victim. It would not involve a situation where someone was very badly hurt unintentionally as a result of a minor scuffle or where during an arrest someone merely intended to resist arrest and in doing so unforeseeably injured the officer arresting him.
The maximum sentence for a section 18 offence is life imprisonment and cases can only be heard in the Crown Court.
These offences can also be racially and religiously aggravated.
The Sentencing Guidelines
Section 18 (GBH)
Section 20 (Wounding)
The information on this page was correct at the time of publication.
