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The LRC in its report issued in March last year recommended codification of These models represented a preliminary offences based on English models. restatement of the common law position whilst rectifying a number of recognised deficiencies, the spokesman said.
As regards the offence of conspiracy, the spokesman noted that the bill proposed to abolish the two common law offences of conspiracy to corrupt public morals and conspiracy to outrage public decency.
The LRC recommended abolition of the offences on the grounds that they were "of extreme and uncertain width", were "largely subjective" and "could evolve into a means of suppressing unpopular or religious beliefs".
In addition, it was pointed out that the offences served little purpose as they had not been employed in recent years, if at all, and there were in any case existing statutory provisions which adequately dealt with obscene public performances, displays and publications and so on. Related pieces of legislation include the Crimes Ordinance, the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance and the Summary Offences Ordinance.
Other major provisions relating to the offence of conspiracy provide for:
definition of the elements constituting the offence of 'conspiracy', which essentially is an agreement by two or more persons to do an act amounting to or involving an offence;
* removal of a defence where the agreement was impossible of fulfilment. This provision addresses the situation where the offender has the necessary guilty mind to commit an offence but because of some fact of which he is ignorant or about which he is mistaken, the result he intended was not achievable, or if it could be achieved, would not give rise to the crime he intended to commit;
* preservation of the common law rules that a person cannot conspire with his or her spouse, a person under the age of criminal responsibility or a person who is the intended victim of the offence;
* the penalties for various types of conspiracy offences to bring the penalty for
conspiracy into line with that for the substantive offence; and
* that the time limit for instituting prosecution applies to conspiracy as it would
apply to the substantive offences.