A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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Monday, April 02, 2007
Erosion of civil liberties
The Fink has this. I am interested in this opening sentence. "Did you know that it will soon be possible for someone to be imprisoned in this country for something that is not a crime here?". Hello, anybody out there in Daily Telegraph land? We already have several thousand people locked up in our prisons who have not committed a crime. They are in prison because they are deemed to be dangerous under the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The times I have come across people in prison who have been labelled with the dangerous tag, and they are nothing of the sort. What is frightening about this legislation is that, for example, Tony Blair could decide that anybody who chooses to replace him is dangerous and he employs a couple of tame psychiatrists to agree with him and that's your lot you are in prison with an indefinite life sentence. Whilst the Daily Telegraph is right to raise awareness about this other threat to civil liberties, I really do think that they should be paying more attention to what is actually happening here and now and not so much about what could happen in the future.
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3 comments:
The problem is that there will always be someone available to be held up as an example of why indefinite sentences would have been handy. A local yokel was sent down for a handful of years for a serious sexual assault on a young woman. I won't bore you with the details, but his behaviour on arrest, and the fantasy material found at his home, gave the officers dealing with him serious concern. Despite numerous protests, he was released nice and early with minimal supervision. He failed to attend one of his first appointments, but no-one could find him....because he'd travelled about 200 miles away, where he proceeded to stalk, batter, then mutilate a new victim, just like he had fantasised.
The problem is, how do you get people to agree who has the correct viewpoint on someone else's future behaviour. The problem is, everyone can tell you their opinion, but no-one gets to say "I told you so" unless you let them roam free.
The problem is, nobody with the appropriate authority saw Dennis Nielsen, Peter Sutcliffe, Myra Hindley, Ian Huntley et al as potential dangerous offenders.
The problem is that locking every potential dangerous offender up forever would, in theory, make us all safe.
The problem is spotting them.
The problem is - there are too many problems. Unfortunately, the current government have passed a swathe of legislation which stifles freedom of activity and expression, under the guise of making us safe. Locking people up forever, with limited explanation or obvious justification might work for them, but I'm sure it would work fine for their enemies too.
Pick your dream team of political psychopaths and imagine what they'd do with the existing laws. Identify the ones they could seriously abuse, and they're the ones that need repealling as quick as you can, before it's too late.
Being a man of the cloth (serge, blue) I have problems with too much liberty without associated responsibility, but don't want to become part of a police state either....
We have civil liberties? Where can I get them?
In the underwear department at Debenhams, between the liberty bodices and the liberty valances. Or you can borrow them from your local library, filed next to the diabolical liberties...
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