Cowardly John, Rotten Rebekah and the Dangerous Judges
My prediction a few weeks ago that we would get a kneejerk Dangerous Judges Act seems to be coming true. John Reid, rather than tell Murdoch's finest to piss off, instead (backed by the disgraceful torturer's friend Tony Blair) pandered to their lies, distortions and shrill tabloid hatespeak. This is the coward's way out, but that's bullies for you - to New Labour, Rupert Murdoch is the biggest bully in the playground, and the Dirty Digger still has the power to push Tony's head down the toilet and flush it. The beast must be appeased.
As someone said, we like lists. Here's one:
- The judge made it clear that he disapproves strongly of the defendant's conduct
- The judge could only choose between two options
- The judge handed out a life sentence
- The judge made a minimum tariff recommendation according to a formula
- The minimum tariff formula is increasingly tightly controlled by legislation and rules put in place by a Government quango. Previously it was the Court of Appeal that decided sentencing guidelines, but this power was centralised in February 2004
- The Parole Board that makes the final decision to release is controlled by, er, the Home Office
- It's extremely rare that lifers serve their minimum tariff
- It's extremely rare that a sentence is considered too lenient and referred to Appeal
- Many people in the prison system would be better served by mental health professionals, including IMHO compulsive child abusers. Any compulsive behaviour you can't control is a mental illness. The judge has no powers to fix it
- The Sun blames the judge
It's pretty clear that the two disconnects here are the absurd Sun lie that a low tariff = leniency (it does or it doesn't, depending on the Parole Board) and that it's somehow up to the judge entirely (it isn't, it's the Executive or their agencies who set both the guidelines and decide on parole). Ironically, the new rules were put in after Blunkett was pressurised to 'get tough' by, er, the News of the World, back in 2001.
The obvious end game here is that the Sun coarsens the debate still further, Batshit Blair's knee starts jerking alarmingly and we get some more appallingly written legislation designed to arrogate more power to a department that is already admitted to be failing under
the banner of Victim's Justice (which is a stonkingly bad idea in itself, incidentally). The Sun goes away revelling in its power to diminish the quality of justice, its unicellular readers have erections at the idea of perverts getting electrodes attached to their genitals, the Home Office gets more powers to abuse and misapply, Tony gets off the hook until the next cockup and the whole edifice creaks sideways into an even more precarious position.
The other effect should be for the judges to lose faith in the Home Office, but according to my contacts they already have no faith whatsoever in the Home Office, and neither does anyone else unlucky enough to be involved with criminal justice. On which note is is interesting to see My Lords Goldsmith and Falconer (who both have extensive dealings with the HO) displaying the beginnings of a spine:
If it 'isn't what we wanted' does he mean that the Sexual Offences Act brought in in 2003 by his Government and the subsequent advice from the SGC (see below for who appoints it) wasn't 'what they wanted'? Seems so. Oops. Kicking the good Doctor when he's down, Charlie? Or is another shot into the carcass of the Safety Elephant? Nah, it's Blunkett as usual. Does he still have his Sun column to defend himself in?
P.S. In the USA they get upset that judges aren't independent enough. Here we worry in case judges aren't properly controlled.
P.P.S. one of the members of the Sentencing Guidelines Panel (which is a fairly typical quango, check the membership out) is the Chief Prosecutor in South Wales, where the Sweeney case was heard. Who picks the Panel? Lord Falconer, of course. Who picks the Council? Lord Falconer and the Home Secretary!
P.P.P.S. It's worth checking out the actual advice in this PDF
I like lists, too, when they
I like lists, too, when they are as good as that one, Monsieur Tom.
Victim's Justice indeed. Why bother with judges and prisons at all ? Just get the cops to say who's guilty and issue AK47s to the rellies.
Seems the little shit is going to knock off another bit of "corrective" legislation on the back of an envelope.
I Was going to say fagpacket, but he's too pure for that.
Nuff said, I'm starting to think of Ceaucescu ...Mussolini... after all, we might be considered 'victims' too..
"Nuff said, I'm starting to
"Nuff said, I'm starting to think of Ceaucescu ...Mussolini... after all, we might be considered 'victims' too.."
...but he's proving to be a bit too much like Rasputin
League tables for judges:
League tables for judges: you know it makes sense to Nu Labour - why else was that list of '200 Wussy Liberal Judges' passed on to the media? (It sounds like the dodgy game the Woodhead-era Ofsted used to play with teachers and schools.) As for Blair, judging from one news bulletin, he seems to be in favour of more legislation (what's new?) and that the current legislation is sufficient (hang on?). They're in a mess of their own making and it's difficult to have any sympathy considering how they've bottled it yet again when faced by the Wrath of Rupert. Blair also thinks he can out-tough the Tories on law 'n order: as the Yanks say, never get into a pissing contest with a skunk.
And who do we think released
And who do we think released the list of 'soft' sentences to the Sun?
10 points to Gryffindor if your answer involved the words "wonk" "Party" and "Labour".
I was lucky enough to find a
I was lucky enough to find a copy of the Sun on the table in the pub this evening - much as one would suspect, lots of judge bashing plus a few carefully placed digs at Blair and Reid to keep them on their toes. Ever get the impression there's a puppet on a string?
As for the 'soft' sentences, since it's so readily traced back to Blunkett (even the Sun's people aren't hiding the fact that it's due to policies introduced under Labour, although they're obviously still lying in several ways) I'm not necessarily sure it's Labour wonks releasing it now, I suspect the Sun has a store of anti-Labour stories it can trot out now Blair is weakened to keep him on-side. Murdoch isn't scared of much, but media ownership laws, particularly EU-wide ones and any break from Washington aren't in his interest.
Vera Baird appears to have
Vera Baird appears to have her tongue up John Reid's arse. Which is odd, as her current boss is Charlie Falconer.
Vera Baird was certainly
Vera Baird was certainly mistaken when she said, 'Now it seems to me that this judge has just got this formula wrong', but she can perhaps be forgiven for being confused by the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 -- which is the law on sentencing the Recorder of Cardiff was attempting to apply.
Of this dog's breakfast of a law, the Court of Appeal in R v Lang and Others (the leading case on the 2003 Act's sentencing provisions) concluded, after 153 paragraphs of trying to make sense of what Parliament wanted done with dangerous offenders,
'It would be inappropriate to conclude these proceedings without expressing our sympathy with all those sentencers whose decisions have been the subject of appeal to this Court. The fact that, in many cases, the sentencers were unsuccessful in finding their way through the provisions of this Act, which we have already described as labyrinthine, is a criticism not of them but of those who produced these astonishingly complex provisions. Whether now or in the fullness of time the public will benefit from sentencing provisions of such complexity is not for us to say. But it does seem to us that there is much to be said for a sentencing system which is intelligible to the general public as well as decipherable, with difficulty by the judiciary.'
It is a theme to which they returned in CPS vs South East Surrey Youth Court:
'Today's application takes this Court to a related but different area of this legislation, namely the obligations of a Youth Court when dealing with a potentially dangerous offender. Here the provisions are not merely labyrinthine, they are manifestly inconsistent with each other and we have every sympathy with lay Justices, their clerks and District Judges who are having to grapple with them....
...So, yet again, the courts are faced with a sample of the deeply confusing provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and the satellite Statutory Instruments to which it is giving stuttering birth. The most inviting course for this Court to follow would be for its members, having shaken their heads in despair to hold up their hands and say: "the Holly Grail of rational interpretation is impossible to find". But it is not for us to desert our judicial duty, however lamentably others have legislated. But, we find little comfort or assistance in the historic canons of construction for determining the will of Parliament which were fashioned in a more leisurely age and at a time when elegance and clarity of thought and language were to be found in legislation as a matter of course rather than exception.'
Somehow I doubt that yet another hastily-drafted and ill-thought-out bit of legislation from a government panicked by the red-tops is going to make matters either more simple or more logical for the courts.
Wonderful stuff, I'll make a
Wonderful stuff, I'll make a note to read up on that lot. I think I only touched the edge of the mess when writing the above piece. I like reading court judgements anyway, it's one of the few places one can find good English.
It's noteworthy that Vera Baird has a constituency to answer to, as does John Reid. Charlie F and Goldsmith don't. One trusts she's trying to avoid awkward encounters with knuckleheaded voters waving copies of the Sun and demanding electrodes and the birch for parking offences. She's also a barrister, like many of the politicians who attack judges (Blair, Howard for instance), although she's actually made a career of it, so doesn't have an excuse for getting in a twist legally. She also used to be the Safety Elephant's PPS.
There's an incipient civil war between the Home Office and the DCA about quite a lot of things, I think.