Guardian UK: In its mania for jailing people, Britain has declared trivial offences crimes

[marmar]

In its mania for jailing people, Britain has declared trivial offences crimes
A libertarian coalition is emerging in the US to resist an ever expanding statute book. The need is just as urgent here

Simon Jenkins
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 December 2009


I have a foolproof scheme for cutting crime in Britain. It would slash court overcrowding, rescue legal aid, empty prisons and calm public fears. It would save billions of pounds, and all without endangering a hair on a single Briton's head. The scheme involves removing thousands of recently "invented" offences from the statute book.

This will not happen, because if there is one thing a macho politician loves, it is declaring any social problem or public disobedience a crime, and hiring more police to confront it. Constantly extending criminality enables prime ministers and home secretaries to walk tall down Main Street, pistols twirling in their fingers, and with no care for who gets hurt.

In a little-reported case at Oxford crown court on Monday, a 60-year-old businessman named Philip Bowles, with no previous conviction, found himself jailed for supposedly switching a VAT liability between two companies. He bitterly protested that he was unable to mount an effective defence because his cash had been seized in advance from his office, as an "asset" under David Blunkett's crass Proceeds of Crime Act. In addition his tax records had been taken by administrators. Bowles was refused legal aid to get a forensic accountant to exhume his seized records, which he thus could not use to defend himself.

After his conviction, an independent financial report into the tax records was submitted to the court but the judge was clearly confused at the sentencing. He admitted that the documents might have exonerated Bowles and implied that there was a case for the jury decision being overturned on appeal. He said he was "loth to put a man in prison if he shouldn't be there", yet added that the whole thing had "dragged on". So he called Bowles a "very serious cheat", banged him up for three and a half years and demanded he pay £130,000 in prosecution costs.

To all appearances, a gross injustice has been done to lift a large sum of money from a man carefully rendered defenceless by the authorities to enrich their budgets. Since the pointless, life-destroying jail term could cost the state as much as £140,000, the whole farrago will leave the taxpayer worse off than if Bowles and Revenue & Customs had been left to squabble before an arbitrator. Another crime is added to the statistics, and work is created for all. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/10/conrad-black-labour-law-crime

[FiveGoodMen]

1. The whole world is nuts

[depakid]

2. Walking down America's path

small wonder that Labour's going to be crushed in the next elections.

So much for "the Third Way."