Impact assessment: Crime and Policing Act 2026: equality impact assessments

This document records the analysis undertaken by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in the design and development of the MoJ measures in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 (the 2026 Act). The analysis considers the impact of the measures against the statutory obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) as set out in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.

Introduce a new offence of administering etc. harmful substances (including by spiking);

Introduce a broader offence for encouraging or assisting serious self-harm;

Introduce new offences of “taking” an intimate image without consent, installing, adapting, preparing or maintaining equipment with the intention of enabling the commission of one of these offences; and copying without consent an intimate image shared temporarily;

Replace the offence of sexual penetration of a corpse with a broader offence of sexual activity with a corpse;

Expand the scope of the existing offence of exposure;

Amend the existing offences of sexual activity in the presence of a child or person with a mental disorder;

Criminalise the detention of a child outside the UK without the appropriate consent;

Ensure that the terrorism sentence with a fixed licence period in Northern Ireland is handed down consistently with the equivalent sentence in England and Wales;

Extend the criteria for polygraph testing;

Add the offence of breaching a foreign travel restriction order (FTRO) to the terrorism sentencing, release and management regime;

Introduce a new requirement for offenders serving community and suspended sentences to notify probation/Youth Offending Teams of changes to their names or personal contact information;

Repeal section 22A of the Magistrates’ Court Act 1980 in relation to shoplifting;

Make grooming an aggravating factor in the sentencing of child sexual offences;

Introducing a Presumption in Favour of Anonymity for Firearms Officers; and,