A Bit More About That Crash

As you may see from the comments on the previous post, a minority of police officers are quick to perceive criticism, and equally quick to respond with hostility and contempt to magistrates and the rest of the criminal justice system, tossing in casual insults as they type. No problem here; I have broad shoulders and I am no stranger to abuse in all kinds of contexts from my job, to my voluntary JP job, to the local pub. I make just one comment:- you are rather more likely to find a fair cross-section of opinion in a JPs' retiring room than you are in a police canteen.

Here's a cross-section of responses from Haloscan. I have taken the liberty of adding comments, simply to make it easier to read.

"Just how much do you actually dislike 'the police' Bystander?"
Not at all.

"How many idiots did you let free this week with this woolly thinking?"

"on a case like this you're able to immediately tell that the police were at fault?"
Where do I say that?

"So an uninsured thief in a stolen car, probably no driving licence, shouldn't be stopped as he is no danger to the public. Just what planet are you living on Bystander?"
Where do I say that?

"interesting to see how many times our car thief had been let off with a lenient sentence by the bystanders of the world"
Who of course make up sentences as they go along……..

"just think had he been in prison he could not have stolen the car....."
Which applies to almost every offender.

"I might however become enraged if I discover that the courts subsequently take away his licence (assuming he had one in the first place) for 12 months and give him a token prison sentence suspended for not very long at all"
Where do you think JPs get their sentencing guidelines from?

"It’s not even worth discussing this on here. The author is completely ignorant of police operating practices and has made a wild assumption without knowing any facts, much like the tabloids that are derided on here. This site is quickly turning into a very cheap police bashing forum"
Comment is superfluous.

"Unfortunately, the same level of scrutiny will never befall the judiciary of this land, whose naval (sic) gazing and prevarication in deciding what to do with class 'A' drug abusing repeat criminals (as undoubtedly this lunatic will turn out to be) is never subject, it seems to the same level of examination"
To whom should I be answerable? The Court of Appeal, the Police Federation, or the Daily Mail?

One final point:- I have no idea what the driver of the stolen car will be charged with, but I can see a problem if he is charged with Death by Dangerous Driving if it transpires that it was a police driver whose actions triggered, however inadvertently, the fatal crash. It could indeed end up as a simple TWOC, whereupon someone is bound to blame the courts.

Was This Tragedy Unavoidable?

In a remarkably swift investigation, it has been decided that the police officers in this dreadful tragedy acted quite properly, or so the BBC tells us. This is the Telegraph's report.
That does not stop some of us from questioning whether the public good might better be served on occasion by allowing a car thief to get away, rather than taking positive 'action' to stop him when the potential price to innocent passers-by is so high. This car was under helicopter surveillance, so the decision to stop it was a calculated risk that went horribly wrong.
Police officers are human, and it would be a miracle if none of them was ever affected by the tyre-squealing glamour of the myriad reality TV programmes showing chase after chase. With hindsight, it would have been preferable if someone with a bit of rank had ordered the car to be followed rather than forced to a halt.
Policing is about priorities. The officers at the sharp end do their best, but it is, or should be, for those of higher rank to monitor these situations and to decide priorities and assess risks.
I don't think we have heard the last of this one.

Get A Grip

I never criticise colleagues' decisions because they get to hear the full facts in their cases and I do not. Nevertheless, I have been a bit disturbed in recent weeks to find myself dealing with cases where suspended prison sentences had been breached more than once, and had not been activated. You can breach an SSO by failing to comply with its requirements or by reoffending. Sometimes it's both. A breach doesn't mean automatic incarceration, as there is power to make requirements more onerous, and to re-suspend; sometimes that makes sense. But I recently saw a case where our man had breached six times, and still not gone inside. That just makes a mockery of the system. If the repeated re-suspension was justified on judicial criteria then perhaps the SSO was the wrong sentence in the first place. If not, there is no excuse for not facing up to the fact that enough is enough.
Use of the Suspended Sentence was severely restricted a decade or so ago because it was being used as a stepping-stone between community service and prison, rather than a prison sentence in its own right that, once decided upon, was able to be suspended. That seems to be happening again now, and is why the Government came close to ending SSOs for summary offences recently. If you follow the reasoning properly, and decide that the offence is so serious that custody is right, going on to decide that it can be suspended with requirements, then there should be no problem implementing the sentence in the event of breach - if not the first one, certainly the second.

A Genuine Answer

A few posts ago I asked what I called a genuine question about Islam's view on heroin, given the fact that the poppy is a staple crop in Afghanistan. I am grateful to Devin for this informative reply, that he sent me by email. I use it with his permission.

He writes:-
I don't believe heroin is explicitly forbidden in the Quran or early
Islamic law, but my understanding is that intoxicants are forbidden to
Muslims under the supposition that the Prophet spoke the way he did
because he figured you'd be clever enough to figure out what he meant.
As I recall, the Taliban was pretty gung-ho about poppy eradication
and had eliminated a majority of the country's heroin production
before it fell. In fact, it's been argued that the impact of that
program was one of the reasons your government and mine were so
enthusiastic about getting rid of them.

However, Sharia (Islamic law) is not meant to stand in the way of
Muslims, but to lead them towards a righteous life. For instance, if
a Muslim owns a pizzeria, his customers will want pepperoni. It is
permissible for him to deal in pork, under those circumstances,
provided that he donates all the money he makes from the sale of
unclean foods to charity (not all of his income, just what he makes
specifically from those products). Similarly, if you're a farmer in
Afghanistan and your options are to grow poppies like the warlord
wants, to be shot or driven off by the warlord for not growing
poppies, or to run off into the hills and starve or become a bandit or
a thug, the correct thing to do in Sharia is to grow poppies.

Further, Afghanistan is an Islamic country in much the way the US is
a Christian one (I think Britain is more ambivalent about religion in a
lot of ways). Most of the population will definitely tell you, for
sure, that's their religion. But that doesn't mean they live their
lives the same way you reconstruct the life of a follower of that
religion from reading about the religion. Islam and opium are two
parts of the culture of Afghanistan, just as Christianity and debt are
in the US, for all that the Bible nominally forbids usury. I don't
think we can even consider it hypocritical; there are certainly enough
contradictory elements of our respective cultures.

Here We Go Again (3)

There is a crisis in knife crime. So the Prime Minister is going to tackle it.
Righty-ho Mr. PM, sir;
What plan will you work out this weekend that has evaded the rest of us over the years?
What will you do that could make a shred of difference to London's underclass, starting Monday?
Why didn't you do it last week? Or last year?
Won't this just serve to distract senior police from getting on with their job?
Just how stupid do you think we are?

Deliberate Misinformation

The Daily Express, which laughably describes itself as The World's Greatest Newspaper, has this to say:

The recommendation of the Sentencing Advisory Panel that many burglars should be spared jail terms and instead directed towards disorganised, feeble community sentences will boost the morale of housebreakers everywhere.

For burglary in a dwelling only unforced entry and unaggravated low value theft has a guideline starting point less than custody - that's something like a walk-in through an open door and a theft of items worth a few pounds. Anything else means custody, and the threshold for sending to the Crown Court is low. Three domestic burglaries make the offender subject to a minimum sentence. Here is the CPS summary of the sentencing regime.
What the Express wants people to think is that the sterotypical burglar (they use the archaic term 'housebreaker') who forces entry to a home and steals valuables will get a community penalty. He won't. Magistrates would probably refuse to touch the case and send it off to the Crown Court, where the burglar could expect a substantial sentence. Burglary is one of those offences that covers a very wide spectrum, from reaching in an open window to steal a bottle of milk, to a full-on night-time break-in with a substantial haul of valuables, and the range of sentences reflects this, as it should. I resent the drip-drip of deliberate Press distortion designed to feed the isn't-this-country-rubbish and the aren't-the-judiciary-a-useless-lot-of-old-duffers canards. But you don't buy the Express to find out the truth, do you?

Grief Exploited

This BBC report is an example of a really difficult decision, for prosecutors and for the bench concerned. For one thing it is a highly unusual case, of the kind that turns up once every few years at most, so there is no reservoir of experience or case law on which to draw. All I know of this case has been gleaned from the press, but I think it is fair to assume that this cyclist was riding fast, on the pavement, and in a manner that regarded pedestrians as an intrusion upon his desired course. The unfortunate victim died in a way that is fluky, albeit fairly common, by falling and hitting her head on the hard ground. Her family, naturally, are devastated, but as is today's custom they were not allowed to gather together with their friends and supporters to mourn and to come to terms with their loss, but rather challenged by the press to say 'how they felt'.
Well how the hell would you or I feel? Numb from grief, some of us might seek vengeance, some might look to the law for redress, some might draw upon their faith to forgive.
The CPS prosecutor who decided upon the charge will have considered the law (not much help, since most of these cases involve Mrs. Miggins being knocked away from her shopping trolley or some such) and will have considered the awful consequences of this incident; I am sure that the CPS charging guidelines were carefully consulted too.
Put yourself in the prosecutor's shoes, and in those of the bench. Emotions are running high, the press are milling outside in the lobby, and the leader writers are honing their pencils ready for a denunciation.
The offence carries a limited maximum fine - nothing else is available. The amount is a massive one by magistrates' standards. So the offender 'walks free from court' and the tabloids explode in their wrath. If my experience is anything to go by, the court's mailbox will receive two or three dozen abusive letters in the next few days.
One final point: some idiot has just demanded a new offence making dangerous cycling on a par with dangerous driving. The awful tragedy we have just been looking at doesn't change the old axiom that hard cases make bad law.

News From Whitehall

The Government has announced a revision to the new Sentencing Guidelines, a month before they are introduced, and before some of us have even received a copy. The new Guidelines régime provides for a balanced Sentencing Advisory Panel to make proposals to the full Sentencing Guidelines Council. Once the Guideline is approved courts must have regard to it, and give reasons for any divergence.
The Court of Appeal's judgment a few weeks ago tweaked the existing guidelines, so I presume that we are supposed to give as our reason for ratcheting up penalties "because Sir Igor Judge said so".
As usual it all smacks of a hasty quick-fix to grab a headline, just like the anonymous witness business that is highly likely to fall foul of the ECHR in the near future.
I do wish the Government would try a bit of quiet reflection before going in with its great flat feet.
Later:- I think that I heard a BBC report that Mr. Straw has conceded that he has no power to change the Guidelines since the SCG is independent. Typical shoot-from-the-hip rubbish.

Can We Do Better?

Martin Kelly has a piece on his blog suggesting some pub names for today's society. He suggests:-

Pub Names For A Violent 21st Century

The Dogger and Duck

The Royal Soak

The Happy Slapper

The Sights and Crosshairs

The Bomb and Burqa

Do any of our regulars fancy having a go?

The best I could do (while wincing at my wife's noisy support for Federer in the next room) was:-

The King's Armaments

The Roach and Rizla

The Robin Hoody

The Puke of Cambridge

The Yob and Bouncer

The Red Bull and Vodka

I am sure you can do as well as Martin. Any offers?

Genuine Question

We all know that Islam forbids the drinking of alcohol. Can anyone tell me what the Islamic teaching is on the use of heroin?
The question occurred to me because Afghanistan, which has many devout Muslims, presumably bans alcohol while being the centre of the heroin trade.

Reflections

A few days ago I had to tell a young man that he was going inside for his first custodial sentence. We sentenced him by the book, and we had a recent Court of Appeal ruling to guide us. The three of us on the bench were completely satisfied that custody was the only proper sentence, but we nevertheless ran through the structure one last time to be sure. We then wrote out our reasons, and called out the clerk to check the legals, and to alert the jailers to come up to the court door and await a signal to come in.
I told him crisply and factually that he was going into custody, and why. He looked impassive. His mother burst into tears and his father looked grim. The officers ushered him towards the steel staircase, and they will have handcuffed him as soon as the door shut behind them. As he went through the door he turned to me and spat out "Tosser!" in what he no doubt thought was a venomous fashion, his unaccustomed composure discarded. That night he would be in a reception cell, wondering fearfully how he would cope with his fellow inmates the next day. He wouldn't be calling any of them Tossers.
We did what we had to do, and I am completely comfortable that the sentence was right.

I didn't like it though.

It is an awesome thing to send a young man inside, especially for the first time. I accept the necessity of doing it when I have to, and I never shrink from the task when it is the right thing to do.
I can already hear the more punitive of our readers muttering "what about the victims?" and I want them to understand that to try to understand a criminal does not exclude sympathy for the victims - in fact, this particular sentence was driven mainly by the crime's impact on the victims.
So I felt a bit flat as I drove home. Intellectually, I was perfectly happy that we had done our duty. Personally, I felt a sense of waste, along with a not-too-sure hope that the boy might at last take a hint. Experience does not make me optimistic.

Not As Clever As He Thought?

This tale speaks for itself.

Judgement Call 2

A young man has just been refused admission to a medical school because he has a conviction for burglary, acquired when he was younger. The college has said that it is protecting the integrity of the profession, and I can understand that. Only a few weeks ago I had to sign a certificate of good character for a young man seeking admission to one of the Inns of Court - despite the cheap cynicism that has become the fashion these days the great professions of this country still deserve the public's trust.
On the other hand, having heard the young man being interviewed, I can see why he was turned down, since he seems to think that he has been harshly treated - I suspect that he talked himself out of his college place by trying to present himself as a victim.
And yet - the practice of demanding CRB checks from all and sundry, soon to extend to nearly half the population, means that many will pay a high price for the kind of youthful foolishness that most of us have got away with in the past.

Thanks to Jeremy for this link.

Here's a piece from the Telegraph.

Judgement Call 1

I have been listening to the radio, and two stories have emerged today, each illustrating a finely balanced dilemma. First is the plan to ban alcohol sales in a part of Devon in anticipation of an Internet-organised mass party. On the one hand, we all know about the real and increasing problem of drunken misbehaviour, one that blights the late-night streets of many towns. On the other hand this is a free country, and we are free to go wherever we choose, and to drink alcohol, provided we are of legal age to do so. If, having gone somewhere and drunk alcohol, we misbehave, then we do so at our peril and can and should be punished for it.
Torquay magistrates will be asked to rule on the ban, for which I can see the pros and cons.
Taking off my judicial hat for a moment, I recall an incident during the miners' strike when I was on my way to Nottingham on business, and I was stopped at a police roadblock, where an officer asked me where I was going, presumably for fear of my being a flying picket or some such. I had a Magna Carta moment, and I said (rather pompously, in hindsight) "I am going about my lawful occasions, officer. I am not prepared to tell you where I am going or why. If you have no further questions I would like to get on with my business now". So he waved me past with ill grace and that was that. On an emotional level as well as a practical one, I cherish my heritage of many hundreds of years of an Englishman's freedom, so unlike those foreign chappies.

Another Not-So-Bright Idea

In its desperation to do something about the prison overcrowding crisis without admitting its own policies to be the root cause of it, the Government has just carried out a consultation on the creation of a Sentencing Commission, which borrows the idea of a 'sentencing grid' from a couple of American states, this grid being a device to allow the authorities to balance the length and number of prison sentences against available capacity. The Judges' Council and the Magistrates' Association, both sober and responsible bodies, have given this their consideration and have separately come out with overwhelming, devastating and reasoned dismissals of the idea. If you read between the lines of the responses you can almost feel the exasperation of learned thoughtful and reasonable practitioners at being presented with such an ill-thought-out mess.
Here are the responses (Borrowed from the excellent Criminal Solicitor dot net)

A summary of the response submitted by Her Majesty's Circuit Judges is set out below:

1. The Sentencing Process is but one of a number of factors that contribute to the prison population.
2. The proper exercise of a judicial discretion is not a cause of prison overcrowding.
3. The preservation of judicial independence is fundamental to an independent judicial system.
4. We are opposed to the creation of a Sentencing Commission. We do not believe it to be feasible and any perceived advantages are outweighed by major disadvantages.
5. There is a process for the promulgation of sentencing Guidelines which works and results in a consistency of approach. Consistency of approach not uniformity in outcome is the proper aim.
6. There are numerous statistics already available that can be used to achieve an acceptable level of predictability in relation to the sentencing process in the Crown Courts
7. Devising a framework to impose on a system that is not codified and where there are many anomalies and interests to take into account is almost impossible.
8. Even if a framework of some sort could be devised and imposed it would be a blunt instrument resulting in unfairness and injustice.
9. If the Government were to adopt a proposal for the creation of a Sentencing Commission this would be seen by this Council as a thinly disguised attempt by the State, which is responsible for the institution of criminal proceedings, to ensure that the State achieves the result it desires avoiding the inconvenient intervention of justice.
10. The American dream would result in a nightmare in England and Wales.

The response from the Magistrates Association sets out the following points:

o The ideas contained within this consultation paper, in so far as they affect the rights of the judiciary to determine a suitable sentence, taking account of both the offence committed and the offender, are unacceptable to the Magistratesâ?T Association
o The opportunity for a wide debate on Lord Carter's recommendation to consider the options for improving the balance between the supply of and demand for prison places is welcomed
o A system that collects data on which decisions can be made in an objective manner must be of benefit
o We recognise there needs to be an understanding by the administration of supply and demand for prison places and that advance planning and budgeting is good, but as we are dealing with human behaviour this cannot be predicted with accuracy whilst maintaining the flexible approach to sentencing
o Magistrates consider that they currently operate an appropriate structured sentencing framework and that this framework will be even more effective once the new guidelines are issued. There is scant recognition of this in the paper.
o Sentencing is a discrete art that requires the careful application of judicial discretion and common sense in every case to address the seriousness of the particular offence and the circumstances of the individual offender. Restriction of sentencing discretion would be a retrograde step.
o People are individuals. We would regret any changes which moved us towards a formulaic or mechanistic approach to sentencing
o Offences cannot have a standardised seriousness rating. The context of the offence changes the seriousness.
o Consistency of approach to sentencing is needed, not uniformity of sentence.
o The current guidelines already promote consistency in approach to sentencing because the judiciary must have regard to them or give reasons otherwise.
o The judicial system in England and Wales incorporates the principles of rehabilitation and prevention of re-offending. How are these elements to be addressed in any new sentencing framework?
o There is concern that the relationship between a Sentencing Commission and Government could lead to political and financial interference into the independence of sentencers and that appropriate sentencing could be jeopardised.
o Much could be achieved without the introduction of prescriptive sentencing processes similar to those in operation in some US states. If the system is so effective why has it not been introduced more widely?
o The Working Group itself does not consider the wholesale adoption of the system appropriate for England and Wales
o It is not necessary to dismantle the existing structures to achieve more accurate information required for strategic planning. This could be achieved by managing existing data more effectively to generate the appropriate information required for decision making
o Parliament has been extremely poor in not predicting the impact of its own legislation or acting on any predictions of prison population it has made, and improvement is highly desirable.

Here is The Times' report.

High Priority

Police have hastened to interview a suspected criminal, as reported
here.
Not many lessons learned from this then.

DNA

There has been plenty of controversy over the Police practice of taking DNA samples from everyone who is arrested, whether or not that arrest results in a charge. I too feel a bit uncomfortable about it, and certainly few other countries go anywhere near as far as we do in the UK.
However, it is a fact that many crimes have been solved by DNA technology, and I saw one last year, when a man was charged with violent rape of a stranger. After the incident, several years ago, he got clean away. Until, that is, he was picked up for a trivial theft, the computers cross-matched the samples, and that was that.
Does that justify the backdoor building of a population-wide DNA database? It's not an easy one to answer.

Back to Bedlam

The Super Soaraway 'Sun' is in the second day of a hate-fuelled rant about Broadmoor Hospital. That's right, hospital.
By no means all of the patients are sent there following a criminal conviction, in fact quite a high proportion of them are admitted after referral from the mainstream NHS.
That is a fact that the newspaper conveniently fails to mention, and it certainly doesn't prevent them from referring to 'beasts', 'monsters' and the usual rubbish. There's a sample here.

Costly Challenge

A physicist who tried to show a Gatso camera was inaccurate, to get his wife off a £60 speeding fine, must pay £15,000 in costs after being proved wrong. Iain Fielden, 41, of Sheffield Hallam University, had already spent £5,000 on his evidence, rejected by Huddersfield magistrates and then Bradford Crown Court.

The Times

But That Was In Another Country.......*

My comment on the Naomi Campbell thread to the effect that she has no previous convictions in the UK has stirred up a bit of comment, here and elsewhere. We all know that she has had frequent brushes with the law, including a community-service sentence in the US. Nevertheless, for the purpose of last week's case, she was treated as being of good character. Some people think that the foreign conviction should have counted against her, but there are quite a few reasons why it should not. The main objections are practical; legal systems and record keeping vary greatly from country to country, and there is no reliable way of ensuring records were complete and accurate. More importantly, there are thousands of acts that are illegal in some countries, but not in the UK. A Swedish man who visits a prostitute commits an offence. A woman who drives a car in Saudi Arabia, ditto. Until half a century ago, there were many things a black could not do in the southern US, just as there were in South Africa until the fall of apartheid. Traffic laws differ greatly, even across the EU.
I remenber seeing PNC printouts in the past that carried details of convictions in, if I recall aright, Germany and Jamaica. I haven't seen one of those for a long time.
One day, long after I have retired from the bench, we shall probably see an EU-wide system of criminal records, but it will take many years to bring in, and probably won't be worth the trouble.

* "Thou hast committed--"
"Fornication-- but that was in another country;
And besides, the wench is dead."
Christopher Marlowe - The Jew of Malta

Campbell In The Soup

The press is full of reports of Naomi Campbell's spoilt-brat tantrum on a BA Boeing at Heathrow, and her appearance before Uxbridge magistrates. The bench had an unenviable task, knowing before Ms.C set foot in the court that their decision was bound to be criticised as 'special treatment'. Uxbridge handles Heathrow cases so celebrities are nothing new there. She appears to have been treated exactly like anyone else, if you discount the heaving scrum outside the courthouse, but that will never satisfy the critics. If you check the guidelines, factor in her previous good character (in the UK at least!) and her guilty pleas, you end up pretty much with what she got. There is no reason to treat celebrities any more or less harshly than anyone else, and it would be quite wrong to listen to the 'make an example of her' lobby, just as it was with Pete Doherty a few months ago.
My only reservation is that Probation will have their work cut out to prevent the imposed unpaid work from becoming a media circus as it did in New York.
200 hours at the supermodel's usual rates would probably cover the Court's annual budget - pity they couldn't arrange that.

Flashing the Cash

Many of our more regular customers know better than to carry any cash when they turn up at court, enabling them to stretch out payment of fines and costs as long as possible. Those brought in custody don't have a chance to put their money away. That's why we have now arranged for the jailers to bring up a note of how much cash the prisoner has in his property.
We were dealing with a serial shoplifter the other day, a foreign national, who had been picked up the day before she was due to fly home. The duty solicitor urged us to impose a Conditional Discharge, since she had no money, and no community sentences would be feasible. Unfortunately for his client, I had a note in front of me to say that she had over £800 in her bag, so we were able to fine her a large chunk of it. We did leave her enough for a taxi to the airport though. We like to be reasonable.

Just When We Thought The Beast Was Dead.......

When Tony Blair stood down and Gordon Brown took his place most people in the Criminal Justice system crossed their fingers and hoped that Blair's obsession with gimmicky and useless quick-fix ideas on crime would depart with him. Brown has yet to make a major speech on law and order. So far, so could-be-worse.
Now, like some long-lost creature arising from the swamps, the dreadful Louise Casey, the one-time 'Respect Agenda' supremo, has emerged, brandishing the fruits of her year's deep thinking on Crime, The Universe, and Everything. It is pure Blairite stuff (or perhaps the word is guff) and is largely presentational. Most of the few useful ideas are already happening, such as improvements in witness care.
Here's a sample of the report's profound insights, focusing on the bleeding obvious. (How did capital punishment sneak in there?)

Motherhood and apple pie may take a little longer.

Here's the summary. Real masochists can find the whole document on the Cabinet Office site.
I have a horrible feeling that Ms.Casey actually believes all this rubbish. Surely there is a vacancy for her at the Min. of Ag. and Fish, or some such. After all, cod need all the help they can get. Or perhaps she could become the Pollack Czarina.

That's Odd

This report in The Sun is in flat contradiction to this one in The Times. The two newspapers are produced in the same building, but their journalists obviously don't speak to each other much.
I do hope that the Times report is the correct one.

Later - this is the BBC's report, giving a fair bit of background.

You Selfish Bastard

I am rarely moved to true anger by a newspaper report, but this, on the Times site, stirred me as few media reports do.
A man who is prepared to kill his own children in order to inflict the maximum possible hurt on his wife or partner is beneath contempt. I do not have the comfort of believing that he will suffer hellfire or any of the fates promised by supernatural beliefs. I do know that he makes me feel a sense of shame that I am a man.

Good Call - But Sad

One of my colleagues recently bade farewell to a well-known defence lawyer, who was making his last appearance in our court. He was respected by the Bench and the staff, and was unfailingly courteous and professional.
He's off to join the CPS, and although I shall miss him, I can't blame him.
He leaves a defence-lawyer community that is under unprecedented pressure from Government policies that have created a pincer movement, one jaw of which is political and the other financial. The two and three-partner High Street firms have no future, and their partners are considering their options. Some will retire, some will merge their firms, and some will join the CPS, which offers family-friendly work conditions and, above all, a gold-plated Civil Service pension.
Tony Blair spoke frequently of 'rebalancing' the justice system. What he really meant was that he wanted to skew the rules in favour of the prosecution and away from the defence. Here's one more piece in that nasty jigsaw.

Expensive Fibs and Other Stuff

Having blogged about the Court of Appeal's stern new guidelines on knife crime, I was recently faced with a simple case of possession of a lock knife by a man of 22. Probation recommended a community penalty, and six weeks ago he might well have got one, but inside he went for six weeks; long enough to make the point but not long enough to allow him to acclimatise in prison. We then dealt with a Proceeds of Crime Act case that raised some interesting points of law and taught me a bit about drug dealing. Unfortunately the really interesting bits are too hot to blog about, at least for some time.
Not for the first time we saw a criminal prosecution (under the Fraud Act 2006) for making a false statement to obtain car insurance - in this case non-disclosure of a conviction. Because the policy was ipso facto void, the driver was also charged with having no insurance. That little lie has cost him a fine, a driving ban, a blacklisting by the insurance industry, and a conviction for fraud to add to his CV.
We had to decide on bail in a Domestic Violence case. If we grant bail it is good practice to impose conditions of non-contact, and to order geographical separation to prevent further offences, but sometimes, as here, the victim has made a withdrawal statement and wants her husband home. CPS policy will be to witness summons the victim and go ahead, but the chance of a conviction will be pretty low, so what do we do? It can't be a good idea to allow victim and offender to sleep in the same bed, but they say they have made up, and they need to make a start on rebuilding their relationship. There is no right answer to this one, and it is a matter for the judgment and experience of the bench. Hundreds of these decisions come before magistrates every week, and of course a proportion of them go wrong, but as I have often said, every bail decision is a calculated risk, within the framework of the Bail Act. That doesn't stop the press pillorying the magistrates if something nasty does happen.

It Isn't Just Me, You Know

I welcome the thousands of comments that have come in to the blog since I started, and I happily accept the occasional bit of abuse, but some people have strayed from joshing into the realm of cruelty over the Great Biscuit Problem. My few, restrained, mild comments on the fact that I and my colleagues do not get biscuits while the court up the road (where our admin is centred - aha!) gets ad lib chocolate ones, have attracted unkind and sometimes hurtful replies.
Now here is an edited piece from rollonfriday.com, the unofficial but respected site for City lawyers:-

Why law firms are like biscuits
On the face of things it looks like there is wide variety but under all the different, tasty, coatings they're all the same...
They cost a packet.
Often both are accompanied by mugs.
They are appreciated by most consumers, though occasionally someone reacts badly on finding they contain nuts.
Although it costs far less to instruct a packet of biscuits to do a legal task, the end product is usually the same.
They both pile on the pounds.
They consists of a few crumbs held together by a lot of dough.
Everyone uses them, but the interesting, enticing exterior never really hides the dry, boring interior.
It's more like a bargain box of broken biscuits: there's a few tasty gems in amongst the old crumblies.

Thanks chaps.

Truism

There's an old saying that goes:- "If drug dealing pays so well, why do most dealers live with their Mum?"

In the last week I have seen a heroin dealer with heavy gold jewellery, a Porsche, a Rolex, and twenty grand hidden away in cash. He lives with his mum in a semi.

Crime Victim

I have had one of my credit cards cloned. It was used to spend £400 on shoes (that's more than I would spend in a decade!) but was then detected by an online seller whose security was good enough to stop an order for a plasma telly. It was no more than a minor inconvenience to me, and we had new cards within a few days. Interestingly there was a single ITunes purchase, used to check the validity of the number I guess. I wonder where they got the details from though? I never let the card out of my sight. A while ago at the local Sainsburys there was a young lad who finished up in court for using a card skimmer. He was only small fry, but cards using information he had gathered were used in £600,000 worth of fraud.