Reading Gaol

A good few years ago I paid a routine visit to Reading Prison. It's been converted to a remand centre now, and has lost the anti-climbing cylinder that used to top its walls, but in those days it was a local prison. We were taken round by a very experienced officer who was close to retirement, and who came out with a phrase that sometimes gives me pause for thought:- "If I may say so, sir, you ladies and gentlemen send people here too late and for too long. They all have a good cry on their first night and for two or three weeks they are scared and confused. After that they get used to it and get on with doing their time".

We thanked him as we were leaving, and I said as a parting shot:- "There can't be many other prisons that have had a famous poem written about them".

"Eh?" he replied.

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

The full text is here.

News in Brief

Tucked away on Page 28 of today's "Times" is this:-

Blind driver case
A man who guided a blind man as he drove a car around Oldbury, West Midlands, was jailed for nine months. Dlear Ahmed, a 21-year-old Iraqi, admitted aiding and abetting dangerous driving. The driver, Omed Aziz, 31, of Darlaston, West Midlands, was given a 12-week suspended prison sentence and three-year ban.

The sentence on the driver was widely derided and received massive news coverage. The man who caused the whole business to happen has been given nine months. Not much of a splash down-page on Page 28 is it?

And As For This..........

This scheme shows every sign of having been devised by someone who has absolutely no idea of how courts work.

Who is, or are "the community"? Who decides who they are? Who elects them? Who selects them?

When being helped by the "community" to "devise appropriate sentences" will the existing structure of the law be used, or can we make it up as we go along?

What a lot of tosh.

What will kill it is that it is bound to cost more than the present system, and there is no money.

And another thing.....This particular magistrate is insulted by the insinuation that some self-selected "community" representative knows the turf better than I do. I was born in my court's area. I grew up in it, went to school there. The local council paid for me to go to university, and I have worked in the area as a businessman and latterly as a magistrate for the whole of my life. Is that "community" enough for you, Ms Harman?

Press Gang

This article in The Times is an example of much that is wrong with the way in which the Press treats crime and punishment issues.
Journalists feed on each other, and attitudes fashions and usages are shared between different papers. For example, in the Times article David Brown speaks of the young men convicted of the manslaughter of Damilola Taylor serving 'just' half their sentence. That is of course the norm, but the impact of that 'just' is to imply that they have been let off in some way. Damilola's parents have suffered the loss of their son, and they have had to come to terms with an investigation that was badly handled in many ways. Mr. Taylor

had urged the judge to impose life sentences, saying: “Anything under ten years would be unacceptable. That is not even a year for every one Damilola lived.”

With all due sympathy and respect to the Taylors that is exactly why impartial judges pass sentence rather than grieving victims. The idea of linking the sentence to the age of the deceased is a new one, but of course Mr. Taylor wasn't really suggesting pro-rata sentences. The article is headlined that the killers "could walk free in three years". As I have said, the 50% remission is what everyone gets, and it is hardly a novelty. Time on remand is automatically taken off any sentence, but the "Times", which ought to know better, leaves the impression that the killers have been done some sort of favour.
The tabloids are the worst offenders, but the infection of sloppy journalism spreads fast, and even serious newspapers are spreading untruths under the guise of news. Still, at least the Taylors did not claim that they were the ones serving a life sentence, the standard response of victims' relatives these days.

And The Winner Is...............

This was a lot harder than I expected, as there was so much good stuff. Any decision will inevitably be unfair, but Decisions 'R' Us, as we say down at the Palais de Justice.

Honourable mentions go to:-

2 Robins (nice undertone of menace there)
JL Jones (Great judge reference)
traineelawyer (nice bit of chemistry - a bit too accurate for my liking)
Squigs (Loved the idea of a tick-the-box proforma)

but: Mailhater got in first with the idea, and Feltham was just the place to sell them, so let's hear it for MAILHATER!

Send me an email with your address, and I'll put the prizes in the post.

Thanks everyone.

Competition Countdown

The jury has now assembled to decide the winner of our competition. We are esconced in the library at Bystander Towers. My manservant, Wojtech Gadulski, late of Warsaw, has laid out the trays of canapés and has decanted the fine wines and ports. Fine Champagne VSOP cognacs and rare malt whiskies sit upon the sideboard, and crystal sparkles in the candlelight.

We anticipate that this may take some time, and the results will be posted on the blog some time after noon tomorrow, which will give us time to finish our champagne breakfast and have the breakfast things cleared away. Cold kedgeree is so unattractive at noon, is it not?

At first sight, the entries look to be of a high standard. We shall buckle to our task with enthusiasm and impartiality. Good luck to you all.

No Comment

I have just finished reading an update on the progress of a serial offender who has been committing mostly low-level offences for more than a decade. As usual it contains good news and bad news, glimmers of hope and clouds of disappointment. Those supervising him are doing all they can to guide him into giving up his offending habits.

One thing did strike me though. He was sentenced to one year in prison last May and was released on Home Detention Curfew two months and one day later.

Vicious Circle

Breach of ASBO. Defendant in custody. He went up to a policeman claiming he had been assaulted, and was promptly arrested for being drunk (which he is, all of the time). His previous record shows five prison sentences, from 14 days to six months, for breach of this selfsame Order. I asked to have a look at the Order, and it forbids him from being drunk anywhere in the Borough including in his own home.

So an alcoholic (who has an allocated Council carer because of his low intelligence and borderline mental stability) keeps on drinking and the courts keep locking him up. What a cruel way to treat anyone, and what a waste of £600 per week to keep him in prison.

Legal Aid

Today was the first day of the new Legal Aid régime that reintroduces means-testing for defendants. As expected we were forced to adjourn five cases for a week to allow lawyers and court staff to sort out eligibility. Across the country there must have been hundreds. The new means form is fiendishly complex and runs to more than two dozen pages.

Court staff and judiciary have worked hard for eighteen months and more to reduce delay in hearing cases. We have hammered defence and prosecution, cut requests for adjournments down from weeks to days and from days to hours. It has worked. Now, with yet another ill-thought-out reform, we are reintroducing systemic delay.

Brilliant. Bloody brilliant.

What's in a Name?

The press has had a lot of fun with the sexual triangle involving two immigration judges and their rather fit-looking cleaner. One of the judges has been outed, and both of them may find that the Lord Chancellor will take a dim view of the whole brouhaha.

Until fairly recently, these two judges would have been called Immigration Adjudicators. Many have been appointed to take on the backlog of asylum cases; I know several who are former court clerks. The pay is fairly good and the hours are flexible. Immigration Adjudicator is hardly the stuff of a tabloid headline though, is it? Calling them judges must do wonders for their social cachet, but it does put them in the firing line if anything goes wrong.

I was at a lawyers' dinner just after it had been announced that the Stipendiary Magistrates, a feature of the courts since Fielding's day, were to be renamed as District Judge (Magistrates' Courts) which hardly rolls off the tongue, but does bring in the J-word with all the risks and rewards that entails. The then Chief Magistrate (he's still called that, by the way) said in his speech that the change had come about because Stipes were fed up with being asked "What do you do?" and on giving the reply "I'm a Stipendiary Magistrate" being told:- "Oh lovely. My Auntie Doris is a magistrate in Chipping Sodbury. Do you know her?"

Well lads, you've got a posher name, but as Judge I and Judge J have just discovered, it does have a downside to it.

By the way, the renaming of the stipes means that there is no longer any such thing as a Lay Magistrate, the first word now being superfluous.
We are all JOHs now - Judicial Office Holders. I don't feel any different.