Test for Criminal Damage (Recklessness against Intention)?

Question

What is the test for Criminal Damage? Is recklessness the only test for Criminal Damage now? What about intention? How did Caldwell change this, and subsequently, how did R v D change this?

Answer 1

The Criminal Damage Act 1971 is still good law. Recklessness was only one limb of it. The first limb remains the deliberate damaging of property belonging to another and recklessness is the alternative to cover cases where a defendant could argue that he didn't commit the damage deliberately, never having applied his mind to the consequences (being, for example, drunk or drugged.

R v Caldwell applied a highly subjective test to the whole notion of recklessness, the judge having directed the jury to look at the situation not from the point of view of the reasonable man (an adult), but from the point of view of a reasonable child, the defendants in the case being children. The House of Lords disapproved the ratio of R v.Caldwell in the 2003 case of R v. G and another.

The test of recklessness now is: “A person acts recklessly within the meaning of section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 with respect to - (i) a circumstance when he is aware of a risk that it exists or will exist; (ii) a result when he is aware of a risk that it will occur; and it is, in the circumstances known to him, unreasonable to take the risk.”

Which of the many cases known as R v D are you referring to here? I'm afraid I was unable to trace anything relevant.

Answer 2

If I throw a brick at you, and you duck, and the brick smashes a window behind you, you are guilty of CD. okl