Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Defendant definition

What does Defendant mean? In legal practice, “defendant” describes the party against whom court proceedings are brought, whether a civil claim or a criminal charge. In England and Wales the term is defined in the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR 2.3) as a person against whom a claim is made; it is also used in the Criminal Procedure Rules. Northern Ireland follows similar usage. In Scotland, the civil counterpart is the “defender” (claimant is the pursuer), and in criminal cases the person is referred to as the “accused” (also the “panel” in solemn proceedings). In Ireland, civil procedure uses “defendant” under the Rules of...

Sentencing Corporate Offenders in England and Wales: Offence-Specific Guidelines, Culpability and Harm, Turnover-Based Fines, Compensation, Confiscation and Ancillary Orders

Published by a LexisNexis Corporate Crime expert

Practice notes

Sentencing corporate offenders

The Sentencing Council (SC), tasked with issuing sentencing guidelines, has developed a number of offence‑specific guidelines that apply specifically to businesses and other corporate bodies or organisations which have been convicted of criminal offences (corporate offenders).

These guidelines are designed to strike a balance between giving prosecutors and defendants greater clarity and certainty about the likely sentence and preserving sufficient flexibility to reflect varying organisation size, turnover, and the type of criminal behaviour involved.

The SC also produces several overarching guidelines, which ought ordinarily to be taken into account for all sentencing exercises across the board; see Practice Notes: Sentences imposed following conviction and Sentencing criminal offences—sentencing guidelines and resources.

This Practice Note summarises the various offence‑specific guidelines available for sentencing corporate offenders, and provides signposts and links through to relevant content. It also brings together some key themes that are common to all of the guidelines...

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Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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