Dishonesty

Dishonesty is to act without honesty. It is used to describe a lack of probity, cheating, lying, or deliberately withholding information, or being deliberately deceptive or a lack in integrity, knavishness, perfidiosity, corruption or treacherousness. Dishonesty is the fundamental component of a majority of offences relating to the acquisition, conversion and disposal of property (tangible or intangible) defined in criminal law such as fraud. Dishonesty has had a number of definitions. For many years, there were two views of what constituted dishonesty in English law. The first contention was that the definitions of dishonesty (such as those within the Theft Act 1968) described a course of action, whereas the second contention was that the definition described a state of mind. A clear test within the criminal law emerged from R v Ghosh (1982) 75 CR App. R. 154. The Court of Appeal held that dishonesty is an element of mens rea, clearly referring to a state of mind, and that overall, the test that must be applied is hybrid, but with a subjective bias which "looks into the mind" of the person concerned and establishes what he was thinking. The test is two-stage: "Were the person's actions honest according to the standards of reasonable and honest people?" If a jury decides that they were, then the defendant's claim to be honest will be credible. But, if the court decides that the actions were dishonest, the further question is: "Did the person concerned believe that what he did was dishonest at the time?" But this decision was criticised, and over-ruled, by the UK Supreme Court in the case of Ivey v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd t/a Crockfords [2017] UKSC 67. The position as a result is that the court must form a view of what the defendant's belief was of the relevant facts (but it is no longer necessary to consider whether the person concerned believed that what he did was dishonest at the time). Baker argues against Ivey v Genting. Baker argues that genuine mistakes about what is honest provides a mistake defence.