Yet Another Criminal Justice Bill

[liadnan]

For the love of Christ... If at first you fuck it up, have another go. And another. Repeat for the duration of your 9 years in office and claim you're successfully implementing policies.

Mr Reid said he wanted [...] to "move away from the traditional view that justice has to involve going to court [...]. The problem we face is what I call the justice shortfall. That is, the difference - sometimes big - between what you and I think is justice, and what a lawyer or legal academic might think it is. My kind of justice is swift, effective and matches the crime," said the home secretary."

The problem is, Reid appears to have no conception at all of the notion that those accused of crime, or wrongdoing in general, might be innocent, or even that there might, just possibly, be another side to the story. Accused=Guilty=Deserving of Punishment. Look at what a brilliant success ASBOs are. (Incidentally, I've seen more than one neighbour dispute where people have gone off and obtained ASBOs on no real grounds at all, simply for the asking, as a weapon in the usual war of attrition. Somehow, getting rid of them is more difficult, however ludicrous they may be.) As for lawyers, particularly criminal litigators, well, what the hell do they know. They all sit in ivory towers all day, not as though they go to a court and hear the nuts and bolts of criminal cases, the nasty little realities and allegations that all this is based on, the evidence about what was done by whom, day in day out.... um. (I actually do sit in an ivory tower a small basement office most of my days, but then I don't practice criminal law, preferring to be paid more than a pittance, that, by the standards of most people educated to degree level, being what junior criminal practitioners receive, contrary to popular belief). For the same reason he's returning to the idea of capping compensation for those wrongly accused: apparently "it is unfair that they in some cases get paid more than people who are victims of crime". But what do the wrongs of the two groups have to do with one another? It's a complete non-sequitur. Unless, of course, they were guilty all along and only got off "on a technicality". Ah those pesky technicalities. You'd think, if there wasn't a good substantive reason for them they wouldn't be there.

Ah fuck off you fascist thug.

EConvHR: Article 6 – Right to a fair trial

1 In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. Judgment shall be pronounced publicly but the press and public may be excluded from all or part of the trial in the interests of morals, public order or national security in a democratic society, where the interests of juveniles or the protection of the private life of the parties so require, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice.

2 Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.

3 Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights:
a to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him;
b to have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of his defence; (etc.)

(Those like Mr Cameron who prefer this stuff to be British (whatever that means) can go read a little bit about the history of civil liberties and the conceptual foundations of the ECHR -quite heavily influenced by Anglo-American concepts, in sharp contrast to the EU treaties-, before saying anything stupid themselves.)

Comments

[sbp.livejournal.com]

What you said.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Ah fuck off you fascist thug.

To be fair to him, Mr. Reid is, or at least was, a Stalinist thug not a Fascist one. Very good he was at it too. He is well remembered in Stirling as one of the CPGB's more effective 'enforcers'.

[liadnan]

So I understand (it's been mentioned in the Eye recently, and indeed his doctorate was on such matters. He was also a Milosevic groupie I believe. But I genuinely tend to think his current political philosophy is closer to fascism in the strict sense,
In another sense, fascism and stalinism are but two sides to the same thing, I'd argue, but that's a different debate.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I think we can agree on 'thug' and a certain fundamental preference for imposing the power of the state on individuals without any annoying checks and balances.

[matgb]

Stalinism was about nationalising anything that created wealth. Fascism was about telling business what to do in a corporatist manner, Mussolini described it as the natural end product of corporatist tendencies.

NuLab dumped socialism in favour of a new type of corporatism, and is making it more and more extreme all the time. Fascism is a good descriptor of what their close to becoming, if you use the term in the correct sense, rather than assuming that fascist=nazi, rather than nazi=fascist sub-type.

So I agree with the sentiment. Reid's an arse.

[hano.livejournal.com]

Actually he used to go drinking with Radavan Karadic and 'greatly admired' the man. Which tells you everything you need to know about him. And he wants to be Prime Minister, God help us.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Hear, and indeed, hear. I originally read "capping" as "knee-capping" and didn't raise an eyebrow over it.

What CF said about the colour of the thug, though.

[greyarea.livejournal.com]

Great post.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

"My kind of justice is swift, effective and matches the crime," said the home secretary.

What is it about the Home Office that turns everyone into Judge Dredd?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It raises my esteem for the handful who haven't been turned to the Dark Side. Whatever else I might think about Roy Jenkins I think he was a very good Home Secretary.

[liadnan]

Shrug. A depressing spiral of unrealistic expectations and inflated perceptions of how bad things are on the part of the public, leading to a tendency to appoint hard men (and I use the term advisedly, have we ever actually had a female home secretary - the only woman I can think of who held ministerial office in the department was St Anne of Widdecome) who aren't big on nuance (though Straw's descent into illiberalism was rather surprising), and a fixation on short sharp shocks that look to the symptoms rather than the cause and are therefore of little effect, and thus round the spiral once more. And because the measures they take don't work successive Home Secretaries blame the legal system rather than asking whether the measures were in fact shit, and dream of a simpler world.

There genuinely is also a serious systemic problem with the Home Office at civil service level I think.

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

Liadnan's suggestions may have some merit, but personally I put it down to the flying motorbike they are issued.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

Hey, the Home Office softened Samuel Hoare. He went from the Foreign Office to the Home Office (with a brief stop in purgatory owing to a pesky little international incident involving the League of Nations, Italy, and Abysinnia) and was actually marginally less of a Judge Dredd jackass in that job than back when he was Foreign Secretary. Of course, when your Foreign Office days consist of you canoodling with a future Vichy war criminal like Pierre Laval, you don't really have anywhere to go but up! Oddly enough, though, Hoare went through a mellow period at the Home Office, wanted to reform conditions for young offenders and such. Even had some quiet qualms about the death penalty, owing to the fact that every so often the wrong person would get convicted. Not that he managed to actually DO much to fix the system, mostly just fretted about it a little, but an interesting piece of trivia. Such a ruthless, cold-blooded bastard on foreign policy (and he had his sticky fingers all over Chamberlain in 1938 and '39) but apparently felt some slight twinge of humanity when it came to fellow Brits. I guess foreigners don't coun t.

Excellent post

[(Anonymous)]

Liadnan... I salute you... I have had to edit my own perorations on this theme to bring into account...sensible and objectibve anaysis. I am grateful thta i was sober enough to read you blog tonight...and have been able to amend my own blog, accordingly

Charon QC

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

Human rights are hopelessly old-fashioned in Australia. There's still an obscure commission that makes the occasional submission (for example (http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/terrorism_sub/asio_asis_dsd.html)) but hopefully they will be dealt with soon.

To make sure we get the right sort of people working for the police to enforce new laws, their recent recruitment ad encouraged people to join as police now had 'more power than ever' with new laws. That's what gets you quality police. You don't want some namby-pamby 'can't we all just get along' person trying to help their community. No, you want someone there for the power trip.

[kittenexploring.livejournal.com]

Why must lj keep picking an icon at random instead of using the supposed default? It's getting to be annoying.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I know, and they're having another go at 90 days' detention without charge, too. I'm going to have to write to my MP again, clearly (I've discovered that whereas he completely ignores snail mail and regular e-mail from me, he will answer if I go through TheyWorkForYou.com, where response rates are collated and published. Cynical, me?)