Assault on Police

A couple of people have asked me to comment on this report from the Telegraph. I wasn't there, and I didn't see the evidence, so I can only talk about the general principles involved.
The Bench will have looked at the Guidelines - you will find Assault Police on page 15. New Guidelines come in to force next week, and can be found here, but they will not have applied to this reported case.
The entry point is custody for a first-time offender pleading not guilty. I do not know if this man had previous, but I assume that he pleaded guilty, although the article is not clear. The court did impose a custodial sentence, having found that the offence passed the custody threshold. They found themselves able to suspend the sentence, with a requirement to pay compensation, and from the Chairman's remarks it looks like the court took account of the defendant's family circumstances. We are always careful in the use of custody, and some of us are especially so where the defendant is working, as a steady job is one of the best ways to discourage reoffending. If this was a guilty plea, that may have pushed the sentence just far enough down-tariff to allow it to be suspended. It is fair to assume that the officer's injuries were relatively minor, as he was only given £60 compensation, but I stress that this is pure supposition on my part.
One final thought: this offence is summary-only, and once the Act now before Parliament becomes law there will be no power to impose a suspended sentence. I wonder which way the bench would have gone if that were the case here?

Sun Awry

The unlovely Sun newspaper tells us, in a full-front-page splash, that 99 -point-something percent of its readers have voted for the reintroduction of capital punishment. No surprise there, then.
Oh look! the phone-in number starts '090' - a premium-rate line. So in eliciting thick-ear mob 'justice' from its readers the Sun is charging them a premium rate for their worthless and bigoted opinions.
Editor's note:- Rupert Murdoch is a born-again Christian. If he is this nasty after being born again, how much of a bastard was he the first time?

The Ring of Truth

PC Bloggs has an amusing piece about the customary scramble among police officers to get their hands on a new bit of kit.
I am on drinking terms with an old-school retired Met. Sergeant, and he told me many years ago about the Met's propensity to destroy expensive equipment. When London's finest received their first proper helicopters (great big Bell 222s) one of them was soon involved in an 'incident', to the surprise of no-one. My pal told me a canteen story about an academic who was making a study of psychology, and conducted an experiment in which he gave two large steel spheres to a teacher, an artist, and a Metropolitan Policeman, with instructions to put them to good use and report back in a week.
The teacher reported that he had used his spheres to teach basic physics, encouraging his pupils to roll the spheres on a flat surface and to record what happened when they struck each other. "Excellent" said the professor. The artist had lined a large bowl with paper and dipped the spheres in inks of different colours before rolling them around. The paper was then flattened out to reveal fascinating patterns of colour. "First rate" said the prof. He turned expectantly to the policeman. "Well, I lost one of them, and the other one's broke" was the reply.

Canned Martyr

David Jones has asked some direct questions in the comments,and I have inserted my direct answers, viz:-

Question for you Bystander.

(link to Council Tax refusenik story)

Question 1. Would you have sent this man to jail? For how long?
Yes. For the minimum period possible - perhaps 14 days.
Question 2. Would you have had a conscience about seeing this man, an OAP, led from your court in handcuffs - a man that has fought for your freedom in WW2?
Not at all. He fought for freedom under the law. He has chosen to break that law and must take the consequences.
Question 3. Would you have sought to find an alternative means - you have the power to write the debt off or order his pension to be attached etc.
Alternative means would already have been looked at. This man seemed determined on martyrdom by refusing to pay.
Question 4. Or would you have felt that you must enforce the law to the letter and that you are absolved from any conscience because the law says you must jail?
Absolutely. I have taken an oath to enforce the law as it is, not as I would like it to be. As it happens the law was properly applied here.
Question 5. What are your thoughts about the well paid council officials who brought this case forward and who MUST have their pound of flesh?
They have acted quite properly, and should sleep soundly tonight.

Numbers Game

As Jack Straw looks desperately for a way out of the prison crisis (one that is mostly of the Government's making) there is talk of extending the early release scheme to free a few more spaces. So here are the numbers as they stand today:
Maximum sentence available to magistrates: 6 months. Let's call that 180 days. Defendant pleads guilty (most do) so one-third reduction. That's 120 days. That is automatically reduced by half, leaving 60 days. Current early release is 18 days, leaving 42 days to serve. That's six weeks. Prisons don't release at weekends or on bank holidays, so those with sentences expiring then are released the previous Friday, possibly knocking 2 more days off the sentence. If, as suggested in the press, early release is extended to 30 days, then the most that magistrates can hand down will be effectively 28 to 30 days - roughly four weeks. Hardly Judge Jeffreys is it?

Off-Topic

I have just finished looking through the local paper, and it contains a full-page advertisement announcing that Londoners on Income Support can get a card to allow travel on London buses and trams for half price. At the bottom of the page are the proud logos of Mayor of London, Transport for London, and, incongruously, the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela.
I presume that this is the fruit of Hugo Chavez' visit to London, when he cosied up to Mayor Ken, and offered cheap oil to the people of London.
As it happens I have been to Caracas. The drive from the airport to the city takes you through festering slums that cling to the hillsides. The inhabitants of the Barrios are far poorer than even bottom-of-the-pile Londoners, yet their Presidente is throwing their money at residents of one of the world's richest cities. Yuk.

Prisons Again (2)

A few days ago I wrote that the prison crisis had returned, and bang on cue Jack Straw has today appealed to magistrates to lock up fewer people.
My hunch is that the recent panic over bail and the vilification heaped on judges and magistrates who grant bail that goes wrong will have just tipped the decision towards custody in enough cases to push the numbers past the previous record.

Here's the Lord Chief Justice's response:-

Message from the Lord Chief Justice to the Magistrates' Association (22 February 2008)

Prisons and Sentencing story in the Guardian
"I have read the report in the Guardian of the message sent to you by the Lord Chancellor. I can well understand his anxiety, having regard to the severe pressure on prison places, to emphasise the importance of not imposing a custodial sentence in circumstances where the nature and context of the offence permit an alternative disposal. This is, of course, no more than the law requires.

I have spoken to the Lord Chancellor and can confirm that it was not his intention to suggest that custodial sentences should not be imposed if the circumstances of the offence are so serious that a fine or community disposal cannot be justified. As the Lord Chancellor and I have always made clear, it is not for him or me to give directions as to how Judges and Magistrates should exercise their sentencing discretion. "

Phillips CJ

Here is the Guardian piece

If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of chickens coming home to roost.

That'll Learn Them

A couple have been jailed for four months and banned from keeping pets for life after cramming 34 cats and seven dogs into a 7ft by 12ft caravan.

William Cannon, 47, and 50-year-old Angela Edwards, both now homeless, were themselves living in a tent at Todmorden Cricket Club when they were arrested for 15 animal cruelty offences of causing unnecessary suffering and failing to meet the needs of the animals.

The pair, who admitted neglect, were each jailed for 16 weeks and banned from owning or keeping any animal for life by Calderdale magistrates. Most of the animals were kept in the caravan, with one of the dogs being kept outside in a small cage.

Douglas Brill, chairman of the bench, said the animals lived in "appalling conditions".

So did the owners. Isn't this too a case for the social services, rather than cluttering up the prisons? Of course I have not seen the facts that the bench did, but just how 'normal' are a couple who live in a tent or a caravan, and surround themselves with animals?

Big Cat Small Mouse

This BBC report is about a typically heavy-handed response to the breach of an ASBO that should never have been made in the first place. I have dealt with many similar cases, where addicted or confused people inconvenience others in an airport, or a shopping centre, or a railway station, are given an ASBO, and proceed to breach it time after time. Normal people wouldn't do that, knowing as normal people would that ASBO breach can carry up to five years inside, but alcoholics and mentally ill people don't really understand the situation, and stumble blindly back into the maw of the courts.
In a typical case (and I am thinking of one a few weeks ago) the solicitor tells us that he has been representing his client for two dozen years, that the man is an alcoholic, and that he will not change, whatever we do. We are more or less invited to get on with locking him up, because the guidelines have an entry point of custody. In the case I am thinking of we went way outside the guidelines and handed down the shortest possible prison sentence, that he had served on remand over the weekend, allowing his immediate release. In other cases I have seen pathetic wrecks of men given their third and fourth six-month sentence, to be served in our crammed prisons while hard core offenders are transferred to open jails to make room for the new inmates. Almost all of them barely rise above the category of nuisances, while the politicians try to work out ways of preventing us from imprisoning serious criminals.
ASBOs were never meant to deal with this sort of thing, and in these circumstances they are not just unjust and unfair, they are wasteful and ineffective too.

Nicely Judged

It is reported that after the second time that a mobile phone had rung in the public gallery the Judge put down his pen, and glared across at the flustered-looking owner of the phone. "If that happens again" said His Honour, "you may discover why they are known as cell phones".