New Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) guidance on offences against the person includes male circumcision for the first time.
The inclusion comes after successful advocacy from the National Secular Society, which campaigns to protect all children from non-therapeutic genital cutting.
The new guidance says that circumcision “can cross the line into a harmful practice”, and encourages prosecutors to consider whether “child cruelty”, “allowing a child to suffer serious harm” or “assaults” have been committed.
In a clear indication that the practice can constitute child abuse, the guidance instructs prosecutors to “refer to the Child Abuse (non-sexual) prosecution guidance”.
The guidance comes amid new NSS research which shows 29 babies were hospitalised with serious post-circumcision complications – including haemorrhage, shock and sepsis – between 2022 and 2024 at just one NHS trust.
The data also reveals over 1,000 emergency department admissions of boys with circumcision-related complications between 2009 and 2024 at the same trust.
“Gratuitous infliction of pain”
The NSS urged the CPS to include circumcision in prosecutorial guidance following the conviction of two ritual circumcisers for serious crimes against boys.
Last January, Mohammad Siddiqui was jailed for five years for circumcision-related crimes including actual bodily harm and child cruelty. Siddiqui, a doctor struck off in 2015 for dangerous and cruel circumcisions, continued to circumcise boys as a layperson.
There is no legal requirement for circumcisers to be medically trained or even to have “proven expertise”. A doctor struck off the medical register in 2021 for a dangerous circumcision that hospitalised a vulnerable child is still legally circumcising boys as a layperson.
One of the child cruelty charges against Siddiqui related to a circumcision performed with no anaesthesia, which the CPS described as “gratuitous infliction of pain” and a “deliberate disregard for the welfare of the child”.
Despite this, religious groups continue to openly perform unanaesthetised circumcisions.
The Initiation Society, a registered Jewish charity which trains circumcisers, states on its website: “Babies are generally not anaesthetised during a Bris [circumcision]”. The Government has failed to confirm whether this is legal.
Last year, the Royal College of Anaesthetists told the NSS that the idea that circumcision is not painful is “erroneous”. It said local anaesthesia should be used if circumcisions are to be performed on infants.
The judge in the Siddiqui case, Noel Lucas KC, said “safeguards and protections must now be put in place and put in place as a matter of urgency, to ensure that babies and young children are protected”.
In July, Mohammed Alazawi was jailed for nine years for circumcision related crimes including wounding with intent. He had no medical training, a history of criminal violence, and could not read or write English. The judge again called for the law to be changed.
NSS: ‘Appalling harm wrought on children’
National Secular Society human rights lead Dr Alejandro Sanchez said: “Given the appalling harm wrought on children by Mohammad Siddiqui and Mohammed Alazawi, the CPS are absolutely right to include circumcision in new prosecutorial guidance.
“Despite the efforts of apologists for circumcision, the guidance correctly maintains that the practice may constitute child abuse and child cruelty. Religious groups that openly perform unanaesthetised circumcisions – which the CPS described last year as ‘gratuitous infliction of pain’ – should take note.
“More fundamentally, however, non-therapeutic circumcision is the irreversible surgical inscription of parents’ religious or cultural views on the genitals of a non-consenting child. This decision should be deferred until the individual is old enough to decide for himself based on his own values.”
Press coverage:
The Guardian – Circumcision classed as potentially harmful practice in new CPS guidance