![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Legal Clanger Rants Again
Jan. 7th, 2009 12:57 pmRight, since I've spent most of the last week revising Criminal Law, I feel entitled to pass less than complimentary comment on this story in The Telegraph:
Recovering drug addict walks free from court after 145 crimes
Yes, it's that phrase beloved of headline writers when discussing the imposition of anything other than a custodial sentence: 'Walked free'.
Now, I don't know what your definition of 'free' is. But mine does not include being subject to a 10pm to 7am home curfew (which, although the report doesn't mention this, will almost certainly be enforced via electronic tagging). It doesn't involve being required to attend 30 days' worth of training over the next two years, i.e. a day every three weeks on average. It doesn't include regular drugs tests. And it certainly doesn't include the threat of being sentenced to prison if I fail to meet any one of these requirements.
Community sentences, and indeed suspended sentences (which since 2003 can and often do incorporate community punishment as a condition) are punishments. Anyone who thinks otherwise would presumably be happy to undertake one voluntarily, including getting the consequent criminal record. This is just another example of the puerile scare-mongering that is used to whip the public up into a frenzy of believing that crime goes unpunished, and so more offences and harsher sentences are needed.
Mr Weaver has done what the criminal justice system asked of him: he has shown he has at least some capacity for rehabilitation outside of custody, and so is being given the chance to continue to prove this for another two years. In doing so, he has freed up a space in our 99.9% full prison system, and so arguably prevented a more serious offender from being given extra-early release just to make room for another new prisoner.
Most fatuous comment? Tory MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown questioned Judge Picton's first decision to defer sentence saying the rehabilitation could have taken place behind bars. Ah yes, prison, that well-known drug-free environment.
Recovering drug addict walks free from court after 145 crimes
Yes, it's that phrase beloved of headline writers when discussing the imposition of anything other than a custodial sentence: 'Walked free'.
Now, I don't know what your definition of 'free' is. But mine does not include being subject to a 10pm to 7am home curfew (which, although the report doesn't mention this, will almost certainly be enforced via electronic tagging). It doesn't involve being required to attend 30 days' worth of training over the next two years, i.e. a day every three weeks on average. It doesn't include regular drugs tests. And it certainly doesn't include the threat of being sentenced to prison if I fail to meet any one of these requirements.
Community sentences, and indeed suspended sentences (which since 2003 can and often do incorporate community punishment as a condition) are punishments. Anyone who thinks otherwise would presumably be happy to undertake one voluntarily, including getting the consequent criminal record. This is just another example of the puerile scare-mongering that is used to whip the public up into a frenzy of believing that crime goes unpunished, and so more offences and harsher sentences are needed.
Mr Weaver has done what the criminal justice system asked of him: he has shown he has at least some capacity for rehabilitation outside of custody, and so is being given the chance to continue to prove this for another two years. In doing so, he has freed up a space in our 99.9% full prison system, and so arguably prevented a more serious offender from being given extra-early release just to make room for another new prisoner.
Most fatuous comment? Tory MP Geoffrey Clifton-Brown questioned Judge Picton's first decision to defer sentence saying the rehabilitation could have taken place behind bars. Ah yes, prison, that well-known drug-free environment.
