The battle between the Lord Chancellor and the Sentencing Council over ‘two tier’ sentencing guidelines escalated this morning, with the publication of two letters. The first, sent by Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood a week ago, makes clear, powerful arguments about principle. She explains that she considers this to be a “matter of policy”, which should be determined by those who are “accountable to the public, both in Parliament and at the ballot”. The Lord Chancellor remarks that the disparity in sentencing outcomes is “real” but that “it is the responsibility of Government”.
She goes on to demonstrate that she understands precisely how toxic and dangerous the Sentencing Council’s approach is. The Council is supposed to “promote public confidence in the criminal justice system”, but their new guidelines are “particularly corrosive” in giving the “appearance of differential treatment before the law”. The Lord Chancellor is wise to identify this risk. If members of the majority ethnic group in the UK come to believe that the justice system is biased against them the consequences for public order and the safety of minority groups could be very grave.
The Lord Chancellor makes it very clear that she supports Pre Sentence Reports (PSRs) being used in every case where they are useful, and is creating more capacity in the probation service towards this end. This is also wise. Judges should have as much information as possible to inform their sentencing decisions. If someone is a sole carer for a child or vulnerable adult, then the court should be made aware of that before deciding whether a prison sentence is appropriate. Similarly, issues around coercion or mental health may affect how a judge sentences a guilty person.
The issue is that the Sentencing Council is seeking to make these PSRs available disproportionately to some groups it has identified as being at risk, while ignoring groups such as adults who’ve been in care who make up 25% of all prisoners.
All the Lord Chancellor asked of the Sentencing Council was that it remove the list of specific ethnic, cultural and religious groups who should receive a PSR as a matter of course.
It has taken Lord Justice William Davis, Chairman of the Sentencing Council, a week to write another of his excessively long, procedure-obsessed letters. I’ve read it so you don’t have to. He makes a cleverly-worded but misleading claim about PSRs, asserting that “frequently the information provided” will make people more likely to go to jail. While I’m sure that in some cases this does happen, the Government’s own analysis conducted in 2023 makes it clear that people who receive a full PSR are less likely to go to prison as a result.
Three pages in, Davis explains that he considers “no errors were made”, and “the Council could see no basis on which it should revise the guideline because of the process”. Again, the judge seems to think that a decision must be good if the appropriate procedure has been followed.
He makes no effort to engage with the Lord Chancellor’s excellent points about public confidence in the justice system. Perhaps he thinks such grubby matters as public opinion are beneath him and the Council. Davis concludes by making it clear that the Council is not going to budge one inch.
The Lord Chancellor has said this morning that she is “extremely disappointed by the Council’s response. All options are on the table and I will legislate if necessary”. She’s right to be disappointed, and she would be right to legislate. These rules come into force in a week. The Sentencing Council has made it clear that it has no regard for the Lord Chancellor’s office, the principles of democratic accountability or public opinion.
We need and deserve a justice system which serves the democratic will, not one which is forced upon us by unaccountable judges. I hope the Lord Chancellor legislates immediately to bring the Sentencing Council to heel.
David Shipley has sold fork lift trucks, worked in corporate finance, produced a film and served a prison sentence for committing fraud. He now campaigns for prison reform and works as a prison inspector. You can find his website here.
Stop Press: Keir Starmer has now confirmed he is ready to change the law to block the two-tier sentencing rules, with Downing Street saying on Friday that “all options are on the table”, including emergency legislation. The spokesman added that Mahmood is “reviewing the role and responsibility of the Sentencing Council”, and did not rule out the body being abolished entirely if the matter is not resolved.
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Vaccine Safety Update they are dangerous & ineffective. No need to read in full.
Has any government made the pharmaceutical companies selling them liable for any harm caused by them? And would they be so keen to flog them if they were liable for damage?
Incidentally, a former nurse told me recently that over 100,000 health workers could be lost if this “vaccine” mandate is not stopped. A disgrace and a tragedy if they carry on with this manifest nonsense (under their own logic, two doses are pointless anyway with tthe o mi cron variant. And there is no reason to suppose future variants will be less resistant to these “vaccines”).
I was just thinking about that whilst reading in full. I do remember how quick government were in attempting to protect itself & anyone pushing the plunger before the “vaccines” were even made available. Don’t know how consultation ended, but i’ve a fair idea.
It’s as if they knew it wasn’t safe, the hypocrisy still amazes me that on a precautionary principle of keeping safe people will stick shit in theirs veins made by people with a criminal track record, no legal accountability & only a profit motive!
Really when you think about it, it’s quite astonishing that we are expected to trust people who are not only selling this snake oil (or linked to them) but also exempt from liability. A testament to the power of the propaganda and nudged units that so many have taken up the offer (and maybe a testament to the paucity of modern education – why don’t they teach logic in these schools?). After the EU and Scottish separatist referenda this must be a well oiled machine by now.
There’s a vaccine harms scheme in the uK, maximum 120k or some such, gonna be a long queue be thinks. Only Pfizer et al have no liability. Oh and good luck proving it was the jab wat killed you.
I read somewhere that the pharmas refused to sell to countries whose governments would not agree to give them full indemnity against any and all claims.
I’d settle for: they are nowhere near as effective as was claimed and nowhere near as safe as is still being claimed.
Whereas the risks from covid are immeasurable and not decreasing at all, despite omicron and the decreased virulence that South Africa had us anticipating.
One can only assume that their behavioural folk are telling them that the snake oil is still flying off the shelves in most quarters.
Here’s a quote from an article by Kit Yates in the Guardian defending modellers like Pants-Down Ferguson:
Kit Yate’s logic in practice:
This just goes to show that there is no arguing or debating with the Left because they’ll have a shamelessly stupid answer for everything.
Hardly a ringing endorsement is it .Yet ads running on Talk Radio this morning still pushing jabs to the 12 – 15 age group .
The first several bullet points paint a truly chaotic and inconsistent picture across the world, nothing like the ‘lockstep’ rollout I and many others here were expecting. That health dictatorship they had in mind seems like a pipe dream.
It always was political, and now its very political. There are though still far too many nations and/or political parties employing the tactics used over the last two years to further their ambitions. Omicron is a stumbling block but the one of the main outcomes, that of strangling international travel, is still very much in place and being actively strengthened in most of the world. Of course this is a building block in the ‘net zero’ movement.
Claire Boan, mayor of the Port Adelaide Enfield city council (my old stomping ground in South Australia) was totally bedridden for 35 days, with repeated trips to hospital, after a severe reaction to her second Covid dose in December and is still adapting to her ‘new normal’, having no idea whether she will be able to play with her kids, or do some gardening, or exercise ever again: “I have had every symptom you could dream of and my body continues to display new ones”.
A council spokescritter has made no comment (very empathetic of them) whilst you can probably guess what a South Australian Health Department official said in response – “getting vaccinated was the best way to protect a person and the community, and the benefits of the vaccines far outweighed the ‘very rare’ side effects”. They added that “like any vaccine, recipients may experience minor side effects following vaccination, with the overwhelming majority of these being mild and lasting no more than a couple of days”.
It’s like one of those talking ring-pull dolls where you pull the cord and the doll speaks the same thing over and over again, like ‘safe and effective’, ‘safe and effective’, ‘safe and effective’.
“They do not state criteria by which reports would be removed and to date have not clarified why this data varies. It is therefore unclear how many reported adverse events have been removed from the reports since reporting began in February 2021.”
It has been puzzling me for months why the total number of vaccine attributed deaths has hardly budged.
It can only mean that these deaths have stopped happening, have stopped being reported or that previously reported deaths are continually removed from the system.