A Look Inside

The Guardian has an interesting piece about Wandsworth prison, and makes a few thought-provoking points.

Another One For The Statistics Fans

As some of the comments to the previous thread show, many police officers, along with most tabloid journalists, don't really believe in anything other than prison as a punishment. The man-in-the-saloon bar will often quote wildly distorted figures about sentencing (and nobody has ever asked me "if courts have gone so soft where have all these prisoners come from?"). The latest stats I have seen are here with spreadsheets available for download that go into very great detail indeed, for anyone with the time and the inclination to find out what courts actually do, rather that what people think they do.

One quick warning - most offences cover a wide spectrum of culpability, so apparent inconsistencies usually have a reason.

Oops! (2)

Mohinder was worried when the police stopped him while he was driving his friend's car. Mohinder was not insured on his friend's car. To avoid the expense and unpleasantness of a court appearance he decided to give the police the name and address of yet another friend. Unfortunately this latest friend had recently, unbeknown to Mohinder, been banned from driving, so Mohinder was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the police station. This was not at all what he had planned, so he protested that the police had got the wrong man. "Oh yes, of course we have, sir" came the stern reply. Matters were sorted out after a bit of cell time, and Mohinder was brought before us charged with driving without insurance and giving a false name. Because no insurance carries at least six points, and because Mohinder only passed his test eighteen months ago, DVLA will now revoke his licence and he will have to go back to L-plates and take a new test. We fined him for no insurance, with £100 on top for giving a false name, plus £43 costs and disqualified him for three months, so he won't even be able to make a start on getting his licence back for that period.

Pass the Sick-Bag Alice

The Sun's headline over the story of Ian Huntley's suicide attempt in prison is

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME

Thus do the values of our civilisation slip away, a little at a time.



Afterthought - come on Rebekah, why not put Murdoch's money where your mouth is, and offer a reward for the first prisoner to slip Huntley a razor blade? What a headline - it's the Sun wot done it!

Keith Rupert Murdoch is a born-again Christian, but he doesn't seem to let it trouble his editorial policies does he?

A Date For Your Diary

Ealing Magistrates' Court (usual disclaimer) is holding an Open Day on Saturday 9th September from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There will be tours of the Court House, visits to the cells, mock trials, and stands run by the Met Police, Victim Support, Solicitors, CPS, and other organisations. There will be the opportunity to chat to magistrates and court staff, and to find out what is involved in applying to become a Magistrate.
The Courthouse is in Green Man Lane W13 0SD, just off Ealing Broadway.

(posting date tampered with - Bystander)

Be there, okay?

Rough Justice

It was the day for Mr. McCarthy's trial. He was up for some bits of nonsense involving an unlicensed and uninsured car, and some odds and ends of theft, carried out with his customary incompetence, thus ensuring his rapid return to a cell - an environment with which he has become very familiar over the last two decades. He had managed to convince himself that he was the victim of a police conspiracy on this one, so he had gone Not Guilty. Given his previous record I and my colleagues (for he spends almost as much time at the court as I do, me upstairs, him down in the cells) had kept him in custody, given the near-certainty of his offending on bail. He was brought up by the jailers, and gave me a wary nod of recognition.

The CPS prosecutor stood up. I could see from her demeanour that she knew she was in big trouble, and was going to try to brass it out. "Sir, I regret that I am obliged to ask for an adjournment this morning.........." She went on to relate a tale of woe that led to the fact that all but one of her witnesses were not present. She started to explain why, but at least had the decency to look ashamed as she did so. I had my Sunday-best sceptical look on, and looked across to the defence brief, who clambered to his feet and opposed the application. We stopped him a little way into his speech and suggested that we had heard enough. He took the hint and sat down.

A whispered consultation on the bench. "this application has no merit, and we will not adjourn this case". CPS bows to the inevitable, and offers no evidence. I tell Mr.McCarthy that all charges are dismissed, and that he will be released, thinking as I do so that a swift investment in Guinness shares might pay off in the short term.

Justice? Cock-up? Well both, actually. He was probably guilty, and the CPS' failure allowed the case to collapse. But he had spent eight weeks inside on remand, which is the equivalent of a four month sentence. If we had allowed the adjournment he might easily have served another six weeks while the CPS rounded up its witnesses, so in a rough old way, justice was served.

Don't quote me on that will you?

Tough Stuff

A judge of my acquaintance is wont to say, when delivering an address to newly-sworn magistrates, that you must be prepared, in the line of duty, to ruin someone's life.

We got close to that today, convicting a man in his fifties of an offence that will assuredly result in him losing his job and being unable to get another in the same line of business.

He deserved it, and our verdict was one that we were comfortable with. Nevertheless, it is an awesome thing to look into a man's eyes and tell him that his world has just fallen apart.

Mad About Raving

The rave phenomenon that so exercised Mrs. Thatcher's government appears to be undergoing a revival. This time round, thanks to Tony Blair's flurry of public-order legislation on top of a few bits of left-over Thatcher law the police have extensive power to break up gatherings of young revellers.

I can never read about raves being broken up without thinking of H.L.Mencken's remark about puritanism:

The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

It's Him Again

I have blogged before about a couple of local families who ensure that the court is rarely short of business. Quite apart from their low-level feuding that results in a lot of sound and fury but rarely signifies anything, they seem to specialise in low level pain-in-the-arse sorts of offending:- the usual motoring offences always include driving without insurance, because even if they could be bothered to get it and be willing to pay for it, and go to the trouble of getting a driving licence, they would be turned down by any underwriter who wished to keep his job. Because they are never insured they are frequently disqualified, and they routinely disregard the court's orders and carry on driving anyway. Any local copper will recognise them, and arrest and prison usually follow. Of Irish descent, most of the men are named after Popes or saints, and for the more serious cases an aunt or granny will turn up to watch their lad go down. Indeed on one occasion when my wife was in the gallery she noted that granny was telling her rosary every time that I spoke. That day we gave a community penalty to one of the 19-year-old up-and-comers from the tribe, so perhaps the rosary worked.

Today in a quiet moment a clerk came and asked us to decide whether to 'lodge' some fines. This is the process whereby serving prisoners who have outstanding fines can be given a certain number of extra days to wipe out the fines. These can be concurrent or consecutive to the main sentence according to the circumstances. On the top file I noticed the name of John Patrick McCarthy, and I said to the clerk "What's he in for this time?". She checked the file and it turned out that on top of his usual raft of driving offences he had got himself done for Dangerous Driving and been sent to the Crown Court for sentence, where the judge potted him for eighteen months. We added another 21 days to clear the fines, consecutive in this case because the fines were for the same type of offence.

He'll be back, sure as the Pope's a Catholic.

Tabula Rasa

This was originally a mistake, a blank post. Even that drew comments from some of the usual suspects. Well go on then, do your worst. See if I care.