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| tom_tom |
Ken Clarke seems to be in a spot of bother over the comments he made on Five Live about rape - full transcript.
He's on Question Time tonight (10.35 pm), should be interesting.
Oh, and Steve Bell's cartoon in today's Guardian is quite good.
| 19 May 11, 9:40 AM Doghouse_Reilly UK(MK), 6 yrs  |
The real Tory agenda from all this is to bring in US style plea bargaining to make the justice system cheaper and easier to run. They seem to have fucked it up at the first hurdle though with this idiocy. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. | ||
| 19 May 11, 10:00 AM Incandescence UK, 3 yrs |
Haven't had time to read all of this yet but this paragraph struck me as a complete no brainer.
My bold - I think I must have the wrong idea about what rape actually is. Isn't it all forcible? Isn't it all serious? Aren't all rape victims unwilling?
Also, his statement about being released on license - yeh that makes a huge difference eh, since no criminal has ever repeat offended while being 'supervised' on license Bollocks of the highest order!
I think, therefor I fuck up!! | ||
| 19 May 11, 10:50 AM englishh UK(PR), 8 yrs |
The completely justified furore caused by his ill chosen remarks about rape has actually meant that little attention has been paid to the earlier part of the interview in which he said that doubling the prison population over the last 20 years, a period when crime rates have fallen considerably, has not worked, and indeed been counter productive. He went on to say that the key action needed was to provide proper support to reduce re-offending rates. I was very pleased to hear a Justice Secretary prepared to take on the "lock em all up for ever" brigade and the right wing press. I am far from a Tory supporter, but waited in vain over 13 years of Government from the party I support for sensible proposals, rather than going on a competitive spree to see who could lock more people up and for longer and longer. His proposals for how to reduce re-offending rates are not great in my view, especially the payment by results for private providers rather than beefing up existing schemes that could do much more if better funded. The principles however are sound. | ||
| 19 May 11, 11:30 AM Doghouse_Reilly UK(MK), 6 yrs |
No they aren't, not if they are tied into the cancerous idea of plea bargaining. The idea that you should offer people a lesser sentence for admitting guilt makes a travesty of the system. The punishment is not a negotiable fee in years for a crime. Obviously plea bargaining is a cheaper and more streamlined system, but it's clearly a spectacular failure in the USA and it should not be carried over to this country. These Tory idiots need to be run out on a rail before they destroy everything else. For a government with a zero mandate they are certainly getting their fingers into a lot of pies. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. | ||
| 19 May 11, 1:12 PM LittleMissEvil 4 yrs |
For a start plea bargaining in one form or another has been in the English justice system for a while now. Someone can get a 1/3 of any possible sentence for entering a guilty plea right up until the morning of any crown court trial starting. What the new proposal is for up to 50% of any sentence for an early guilty plea, which would be at their first court hearing in the magistrates court before any further court time is used. Yes it is to save money, which if you consider probably costs on average £2000 per day in court time alone, with there being 3 separate hearings before any trial starts, and the average trial last's 2-3 days for most common offences; you are talking of £10,000 in trial time then you have to cost of the solicitors and barristers time prior to any trial. All of which is normally picked up by the state. So to give someone a slightly larger reduction for pleading guilty at the first opportunity is a good thing. It's in the water baby, it's in the pills that pick you up It's in the water baby, it's in the special way we fuck It's in the water baby, it's in your family tree It's in the water baby, it's between you and me - B.Molko | ||
| 19 May 11, 1:40 PM Doghouse_Reilly UK(MK), 6 yrs |
No it isn't a good thing. And yes, you can do it a bit in England, but not Scotland where they have spotted it as bullshit a mile off. The fact is we're talking about justice and due process here, like so many aspects of British society this is not an area where corners ought to be cut. The cheap solution is rarely the best. I do believe that a guilty plea should count for something in mitigation, but the whole business of monkeying around with crimes, treating cases almost as transactions, is laughable. Also if it became the case that a sentence can be halved for an early plea, think of the consequences for miscarriages of justice. You're basically telling everybody charged with a crime that if they take advantage of their right to a trial, a right that should be sacred in this country, that if they exercise that right they are effectively doubling their potential sentence. Nobody should be suffer additional punishment for opting to defend themselves as is their right. What we'll see is the police leaning on people to take soft confessions to make the stats look good. It's just a monumentally bad idea. Even in the limited form it currently exists is should be banned. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. | ||
| 19 May 11, 1:58 PM DancesWithPussycats UK(TW), 7 yrs |
The fuss about this seems misdirected. It is obvious that the seriousness of a crime varies depending on the circumstances and how it is carried out. Is anyone seriously suggesting that it is no more serious to rape a stranger while holding a knife to her throat than it is for a 16 year old to sleep with a 15 year old, or for a couple of people to have a drunken fuck after a party (when the woman cannot legally give consent due to being intoxicated)? The real cause for concern is the plea bargaining aspect. Someone who is bang to rights can plead guilty and get a lesser sentence, while someone who pleads innocence gets a longer sentence despite less evidence against them. In a way it coerces an innocent person to plead guilty for fear of a more severe sentence if they plead innocent. International man of mystery | ||
| 19 May 11, 3:06 PM Doghouse_Reilly UK(MK), 6 yrs |
I agree, although I would argue that perhaps the misdirection of fuss is not unwarranted. Bringing down the Justice Secretary for being a repulsive worm seems like fair play, and if it happens to stop this horrible policy from being shoved through then fair play. Worth bearing in mind that in your examples by the way the 16 year old with 15 year old would be a statutory rape, which is a lesser crime even though it carries the same kind of a name. Suggesting that a violent rape is less serious than a date rape is missing the point, it's a violation of the person. The process leading up to it is not particularly important to the severity of the crime itself. Although I would imagine the use of overt threat of violence would lead to a greater sentence simply because of the threat posed by the offender to society, there are not different levels of rape in that sense (also, though I'm not sure, anybody committing the stereotypical attack in a darkened alley with a knife or whatever would be charged with a bunch of related offences to boot). Long and the short of it is that the rape comments have energised people and made them aware that these policies were on the cards, some it's a doubly bad thing for the Tories to be picking a wholly unnecessary fight while they are in the middle of trying to undermine a person's right to a day in court. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. | ||
| 19 May 11, 5:02 PM wonderer UK, 5 yrs |
Why on earth do we put up with a state bureaucrracy for the judiciary anyway. While we're streamlining, why on earth can't we get some private enterprise in, incentivesed by sharehlder value rather than this bizarre insistence on being nice to defendants who we all know are crimilnals. I'm sure an entrepeneurial organisation could do a far more efficient job of getting tirals over more quickly and cheaply and save the taxpayer £££. And as we all know, the most important thing in life is £££. ETA for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know me, there is more than a smidgoen of irony in that post. "Wisdom begins in wonder” (Socrates) Edited 19 May 11, 5:08 PM by wonderer | ||
| 19 May 11, 6:20 PM geek_love 2 yrs |
Well firstly, of course rape is a bad thing, I really don't think that anyone is going to disagree with that. Are all cases equally bad, I don't think so, so I feel that attacking Ken Clarke for stating this fact is somewhat unfair. Not all theft is equally as bad and neither is all murder. A crime is seldom an isolated incident, there are always circumstances surrounding it, some may reduce the seriousness of the crime, some may increase it. I can't say that Ken played an absolute media blinder on this, but what he says is basically true, like it or not. As with Cameron's "Calm down dear" I think the labour party is to concerned with trying to take down the tories by any means possible, something the tories are equally as guilty of when it comes to labour "gaffes". As to Ken's proposals to help streamline the court process I totally disagree with them as they seem to be squarely aimed at simply saving money. If there are too many prosecutions going through the system then ALL political parties need to have a long hard look at their policies to see why we seem to have an ever increasing number of crimes to process.
Do you ever want to run through a mall with an M-16 yelling "kill them all" ? |
