Friday, November 10, 2006

"Judges given more sentencing powers", claims the Guardian headline in an article by Matt Weaver, 9 November 2006. This is contradicted by the first paragraph which begins, "Judges are to get powers...". It annoys me that the Guardian has sunk to the gutter level of the Sun in its attention grabbing headlines. It does not appear to matter that the headline is not true. Whatever happened to integrity in journalism?

This is another attempt by the home secretary John Reid to restore public confidence in the Criminal Justice System. In my view, public confidence is gained by seeing a system that works and not seeing a system that is continually failing. These so-called new measures have been tried before. It is rather like trying to stick a soggy plaster on the hole in the Titanic.

Why is John Reid looking towards the American system to bring their ideas over here when they have failed over there? If it is success he is looking for, he only has to look as far as the Netherlands where they have a Criminal Justice System that works.

To be continued...

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