Effective remorse

Effective remorse reduces or removes punishment in return for the offender's post-offence conduct showing genuine contrition. It is not a general rule: the offences it covers and its conditions are regulated separately within the relevant offence definitions.

Property offences are the best-known field: in theft, fraud and breach of trust, restoring the victim's loss in kind or through compensation earns reductions that vary by procedural stage, with redress before the trial opens rewarded more generously. In drug offences, a user's application for treatment and assistance in uncovering accomplices ground reductions or impunity.

Where the loss is repaired only in part, applying the reduction requires the victim's acceptance. By incentivising redress, the institution also serves the practical function of accelerating the victim's recovery, and amounts paid in the criminal case are set off against damages in any civil action.