Table of Contents
Most people meet the phrase “contempt of court” through a headline about a juror who did her own internet research, or a protester carried out of a hearing by security. The reality is duller, and far more useful to understand. Contempt is the mechanism courts use to protect the one thing they cannot function without: the ability to make decisions that actually stick.
Strip away the theatre and it covers two quite different situations. One is refusing to do what a judge has ordered you to do. The other is behaving in a way that damages the court’s ability to decide a case fairly. Both can end in prison, but they are proved differently, punished differently and argued about in different ways.
What contempt of court actually means
Contempt is not a criminal offence in the ordinary sense. It is a power a court holds in reserve to protect its own authority. No single statute sets out a tidy definition; most of it is common law, built up case by case over centuries, with a handful of statutory additions such as the Contempt of Court Act 1981.
The practical effect matters more than the theory. A judge can deal with contempt quickly, often inside the same proceedings, without waiting for the police or the Crown Prosecution Service to take an interest. That speed is the whole point. A freezing order that can only be enforced after an eighteen-month prosecution is not much of an order.
The two main types: civil and criminal contempt
The labels confuse people, because civil contempt can still put you in a cell. The distinction is about what the contempt is aimed at, not how serious it is.
Civil contempt: breaching an order
This is the common one. You were told to do something, or told not to do something, and you didn’t. Miss a disclosure deadline. Keep trading in breach of an injunction. Move assets offshore despite a freezing order. Publish the story the court told you to hold back. The breach might be deliberate or careless, but the central question is simply whether you complied.
Injunctions generate most of these applications, because an injunction is a direct personal command to the person named on it. If you want the mechanics of how those orders are granted and what a breach involves, there is a clear walkthrough in this guide to injunctions and the consequences of ignoring one.
Criminal contempt: interfering with the administration of justice
This covers conduct that attacks the process itself. Shouting at a judge. Threatening a witness. Taking photographs in a court building where it is prohibited. Refusing to answer a question you have been directed to answer. Contacting a juror. A juror who looks the defendant up online commits a criminal offence under section 20A of the Juries Act 1974, and the judge can treat it as contempt as well.
Not all of it happens in a courtroom. Witness intimidation, destroying evidence covered by a disclosure order and full-blown trial by media all sit within the same category.
Why the penal notice decides so many cases
Here is the detail that sinks a surprising number of applications. An order that you can be imprisoned for breaching must say so on its face. That warning is called a penal notice, and it appears near the front of the order in plain words: disobedience may result in imprisonment, sequestration of assets or a fine.
If the order was never endorsed with a penal notice, or the person never actually knew about it, a committal application can fail at the first hurdle no matter how flagrantly the order was broken. Courts take the view that locking someone up for breaking a rule nobody told them about is not justice. So the paperwork is the first thing to check, not the last.
Undertakings given to the court carry identical weight. A promise made to a judge is enforceable as if it were an order and needs the same warning attached.
Contempt by publication and the strict liability rule
The Contempt of Court Act 1981 introduced what lawyers call strict liability. Under section 2, a publication is in contempt if it creates a substantial risk that active proceedings will be seriously impeded or prejudiced. Intent is irrelevant. So is the journalist’s sincere belief that the piece was balanced. What counts is the risk.
“Active” has a technical meaning. Criminal proceedings become active on arrest, the issue of a warrant, a summons or a charge. From that moment, coverage that assumes guilt or digs into previous convictions can be dangerous. This is why newsrooms keep lawyers on call and why the Attorney General’s Office occasionally writes to editors about their front pages.
The same Act gives judges other tools. A section 4(2) order postpones reporting of part of a hearing. A section 11 order prohibits naming a person. Breaching either is a contempt in its own right, and these orders carry real teeth in cases involving children, sexual offences or national security.
How a committal application works in practice
In England and Wales the procedure sits in Part 81 of the Civil Procedure Rules, rewritten in 2020 to make the process clearer and slightly less hostile to litigants in person. It remains unforgiving on detail. The application must be supported by evidence, served personally on the alleged contemnor, and it must identify every alleged breach with precision. Vague complaints that someone has been difficult will be dismissed.
The court will typically want to see:
- A copy of the order, endorsed with a penal notice, plus proof that it was served.
- Evidence that the person knew about the order and had the means to comply.
- Specific acts or omissions, dated and described, with supporting evidence for each.
- That compliance was within the person’s control rather than genuinely impossible.
- Proof to the criminal standard, meaning the court must be sure before making a finding.
That last point surprises almost everyone. Although breaching an order is technically a civil matter, the allegation must be proved beyond reasonable doubt. The alleged contemnor also keeps the right not to incriminate themselves, which can make cross-examination distinctly awkward.
The first hearing often isn’t the last
Most committal applications do not end in prison. Judges routinely adjourn to give the alleged contemnor one final chance to comply, which is commonly called purging the contempt: you do what you were told, pay the costs, and the application falls away. It is a pragmatic approach, because the court’s real interest lies in the order being obeyed rather than in punishment for its own sake. Before reaching that stage at all, it is usually worth working through the ladder of less dramatic options set out in this guide to enforcing a court order when the other side won’t comply.
What a judge can actually do after finding contempt
Superior courts have a broad menu. Committal to prison carries a maximum of two years for each contempt under section 14 of the 1981 Act, while magistrates are limited to one month and a £2,500 fine. High Court fines can be unlimited. Companies face sequestration of assets, meaning the court appoints someone to take control of income until the breach stops. Directors and senior officers can be personally committed where they were responsible for the company’s non-compliance.
Sentencing factors look much like criminal sentencing: the seriousness of the breach, whether it was deliberate, whether it continued after warnings, the harm caused, and any genuine remorse. A prompt apology and immediate compliance can shift the outcome considerably. Being a litigant in person who honestly misunderstood helps, but it is not a defence.
Costs are the quieter penalty. A successful committal application normally brings an adverse costs order, and those bills frequently dwarf any fine. None of it puts money in the claimant’s pocket, though. Where the real aim is recovering a debt rather than punishing defiance, the more direct route is covered in this guide to collecting a court judgment and turning a signed order into money.
Contempt versus a legitimate grievance
Many people who breach orders believe they have been treated badly, and occasionally they are right. Frustration is still not a defence. If you think an order was wrong, the remedy is to appeal it, or to apply to vary or discharge it. Tearing the order up and explaining to a judge afterwards that it was unfair has a highly predictable ending.
Where real hardship exists, such as an inability to pay or a document that simply does not exist, the answer is to bring the problem back to court before the deadline, not after the application lands on your doormat. Judges respond far better to early honesty than to late excuses invented under pressure.
If you are served with a committal application
Read the paperwork twice. Check whether the order carried a penal notice and whether it was properly served on the right person at the right address. Then take each alleged breach on its own and work out what evidence exists for and against it. If you can comply now, comply now, because doing so before the hearing is worth considerably more than an apology delivered during it.
Get advice early, even if it is a single appointment with a solicitor. The rules on service, evidence and the form of the application are strict, and a defective application can often be defeated on a technical point. You just need to spot the defect before the hearing rather than halfway through it. Turn up, be straight about what happened, and bring the order with you. Judges deal with these applications every week and have heard every explanation there is.
