On 30 October 2026, the Law Commission issued a Press Release on a new project that will consider the application of the criminal law to conduct involving a dead body or human remains; extracts are reproduced below.
Law Commission to review offences against dead bodies
Published: October 30, 2026
The Law Commission of England and Wales has launched a new project that will consider the application of the criminal law to conduct involving a dead body or human remains. There is no offence dealing specifically with mistreatment or concealment of a dead body in England and Wales, nor of disrespectful acts towards dead bodies or human remains generally. Particular concerns relate to, for example: dismemberment; image-based abuse; sexual abuse; and a killer’s refusal to provide the location of their victim’s body.
There are a variety of common law offences (established by judges in previous cases) and statutory offences (created by Parliament) which may apply to some reprehensible conduct towards deceased people, but none do so comprehensively and clearly. In some cases, the existing offences do not cover certain behaviours; in others, they may be vaguely defined or reflect outdated attitudes.
The project will examine any gaps in the current law and consider how best to ensure that the criminal law provides consistent, effective and appropriate protection against the interference with dead bodies or human remains after death. The Law Commission will publish a preliminary paper in early 2027, setting out our current understanding of the issues, the scope of the project and inviting initial views.
Further engagement with a broad range of individuals and organisations will take place once work on the project is underway, ahead of the publication of a consultation paper setting out the Law Commission’s provisional proposals for reform.
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Comment
Further details are available on the project page which cites papers by Jones [1] and Milne [2]. Jones notes the case of the body of a deceased Muslim woman, found covered in rashers of bacon whilst it lay in a hospital morgue. She states that where corpse desecration has potentially been penalised, this has been under the guise of some other offence. Other examples include the offence of “preventing a lawful and decent burial” and “‘the wholesale systematic retention of organs between 1988 and 1995 at the Royal Liverpool Children’s Hospital (Alder Hey)”.
The Terms of Reference list important exclusions for the project:
“This project will not make recommendations in relation to:
- the regulation of the death care sector;
- the regulation of the sale and display of dead bodies and human remains;
- property offences (for example, theft and fraud) ); or
- offences related to the Law Commission’s “Burial, Cremation and New Funerary Methods” project except in so far as relevant for the purposes set out above.”
[1] Jones SI, (2017) A grave offence: corpse desecration and the criminal law. Legal Studies, [2017] 37 (4), 599-620.
[2] Milne, E. ‘Concealment of Birth: Time to Repeal a 200-Year-Old “Convenient Stop-Gap”?‘, Feminist Legal Studies, [2019], 27 (2),139-162.