Sentencing of Rioters

There has been some concern expressed from some quarters, including here, regarding the sentencing of those involved in the recent riots.

Personally, I feel the District Judges and Crown Court Judges have not been politically influenced. I rather suspect that, having been constrained for years by our ludicrous sentencing guidelines, the Judges have jumped at the opportunity to step outside of the constraints of those guidelines and give sentences that appear to actually reflect the offence and public demand.

Those who work outside of the failing justice system in this country need to be aware that the sentences given bear little resemblance to time actually served. For example, an offender looting a shop and pleading guilty to burglary has been attracting a tariff of around 3 years imprisonment. A third is taken off for a guilty plea, and so we are down to two years. The offender is eligible for Home Detention Curfew (introduced in 1999) after serving just one quarter of their sentence. So what may seem a harsh 2 years prison actually means 6 months prison followed by around 3 months on a curfew order at home. The home curfew usually applies from 8pm to 6 am but may be less or up to 12 hours maximum. (The maximum curfew may be increased to 16 hours in the near future.)

Shorter sentences are equally reduced. Magistrates currently are only allowed to impose a maximum sentence of 6 months imprisonment. A sentence of 6 months results in 3 months prison at the most and usually 2.

Recently we had a spate of burglaries. The suspect for these offences had been sentenced to 5 years in prison (he had convictions for more than 60 offences) in 2009. You may be forgiven for thinking he could not be responsible as he must be in prison. We have learnt this means nothing and always check. The prisoner may be on weekend release, work experience or even paroled. This man had been released on parole after 14 months in prison.

Successive Governments have conned the public regarding prison sentences and the lack of almost any rehabilitation for those serving less than three years. These policies are just parts of the significant failings of the justice system and one of the reasons the system fails to deal with offenders effectively either from a punitive or rehabilitative perspective.

Notting Hill 2

Well at least we got out and about tonight. Generally things were pretty good but there were some tensions.

The Carnival is being hailed as a huge success. One man has been seriously assaulted. At about 8pm some youths started throwing bottles at police lines. Couldn't be better could it? Well worth the estimated £4 million policing bill?

What I did see tonight was some much better tactics from the police. Snatch teams backed up by a number of officers resulted in a number of arrests that may not have happened in other circumstances. The yobs will get wise to this and we need to be careful how this develops.

Notting Hill

I have just got home from the Metropolis having spent almost ten hours sitting around waiting to see what happened at Notting Hill Carnival. The Met didn't seem to want the county Mountie's out on the streets, which was a shame.

I still haven't worked out who is actually in charge of the policing of the Carnival but we did get a few words from a youthful Commander, Steve Rodhouse, who gave us the Young Mr Grace speech. "You've all done really well!" (Sorry, that shows my age. Are You Being Served circa 1973.) The whole of the Met seemed to be crawling with scrambled egg on hats and shoulders.



Commander Steve Rodhouse aka Tin Tin?

The press have hailed the event a success so far and one of the most peaceful with fewer arrests than normal. Radio traffic suggested there were some serious issues. A female officer was slashed with a knife. This seems to have gone largely unreported. At one point youths were throwing missiles at officers and running amok, although that seemed to be sorted out quickly.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

A Man With Some Balls at Last

My thanks to Zorro for this. Readers of this blog will know that I have been asking for someone from the black community in this country to stand up and speak out about the drug and gang culture in that community. David Lamentable, that pathetic, disgraceful apology for a leader and so called MP for Tottenham will never be that man.

This is quite a long video clip but listen to the Mayor of Philadelphia talking about similar issues in the USA. This man has got the balls that David Lamentable is missing.

More Unrealistic Expectations

I was going to write a few thoughts down regarding the aftermath of the riots. I am concerned that the Government seem to be happy to allow the Courts to wave the stick and there is a distinct lack of discussion on the policy changes required to reverse the mess we are in. I loathe the disgusting Daily Mail and I don't always agree with him, but Peter Hitchens has said it all for me here.

Ashleigh Hall - befriended a sex offender, Peter Chapman, on Facebook and was subsequently murdered by him.

On another note, this story caught my eye. It is a tragedy that 17 year old Ashleigh Hall was murdered by Peter Chapman a known sex offender. Ashleigh's mother has decided that she is going to sue four police forces who should have been monitoring Chapman. I don't know if these forces failed to carry out basic monitoring of Chapman but to suggest that supervising sex offenders in the community will stop then re offending is like suggesting that having a chat once a week with a drug addict will stop them taking drugs.

There are thousands of registered sex offenders and they are supposed to notify the police where they are living and meet with police supervisors regularly to discuss what they are doing and to try and establish if they are a risk to anyone. I am aware of one case where a sex offender has refused access to the police and the courts have agreed that it is an infringement of his human rights to have the police calling at his home. He refuses to go to a police station and so his supervising officer meets him once a week in his car in a street, 2 miles from his home. How this can have any influence on his offending I don't know.

If you want to eliminate the risk of sex offenders re offending keep them behind bars until you are sure and then we won't have to worry about ridiculous monitoring in the community, which is designed to empty the prisons and give the public confidence, but in reality achieves almost nothing.

PS. I see the former Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith has had the painters in again. Does this mean we can expect another invoice for her husbands porn?