Contempt of Court (Contempt of Court Act 1981)

Contempt of court is not an offence that police charge. It is a proceeding, dealt with by the court in which the contempt occurs, and the court acts on its own authority rather than on a charge brought by the CPS. There is accordingly no offence definition, no points to prove, no power of arrest attached to it and no sentence on conviction.

What the statute fixes is the limit of the court's power to commit. In any case where a court has power to commit a person to prison for contempt of court and, apart from that provision, no limitation applies to the period of committal, the committal shall, without prejudice to the power of the court to order his earlier discharge, be for a fixed term, and that term shall not on any occasion exceed two years in the case of committal by a superior court, or one month in the case of committal by an inferior court (Contempt of Court Act 1981, s.14(1)). Where an inferior court imposes a fine for contempt, the fine shall not on any occasion exceed £2,500 (s.14(2)).

Officers encountering conduct in or around court proceedings should report it to the court, which decides whether to deal with it as a contempt. Where the same conduct also amounts to a criminal offence, that offence is charged in the ordinary way and is on its own page.

In practice

The mode_of_trial and max_sentence fields above exist because every page in this section carries them. They do not describe a trial or a sentence here: contempt is sui generis and follows neither the summary nor the either-way procedure. Read them as the committal limits in s.14, nothing more.

This page is deliberately not in the pocketbook shape. The quoted definition, points to prove and powers that every offence page carries do not exist here, because there is no offence to charge.