Gone…Gone Now

On the Saturday morning when the ambulance arrived she was already going to die. Nothing could save her but she was still conscious and speaking. It had started of with a phone call “Come quickly, my wife has set herself on fire in the kitchen” The ambulance service copied it in for us because they know we are always interested in an Asian female burn victim. Asian, female, early 30′s, married, 2 children, burns over 70% of body area.

Her husband was also admitted with bad burns to both hands. On his release from treatment, he was to spend a less than wonderful 14 hours in a Police cell not of his choice because as the only other adult in the house at the time, it was felt that he might just have had something to do with his wifes’ condition.

It is amazing how quickly assumption can set in. When I did a countback on day one of her painful road to death, she had been asked the same question by the ambulance paramedic, two doctors, two police officers and four nurses. They all asked “Who did this to you?” and to each and every one, she replied along the lines of “Nobody, I did it to myself. I want to die.” I don’t think any of them entirely believed her.

In the following weeks we had a number of anonymous phone calls from people who wanted us to know that just before the lady was set on fire, her husband was seen by a friend of a friend going into the house with a petrol can. There were also anonymous calls that there were rumours that after we bailed him, he had made admissions to setting his wife on fire to un-named friends I got the job of chasing these vital and informative leads down.

As the “Blue Mackrel” count got to the point where either he had done it or someone was trying their best to fit him up, I did a bit of background. Turns out the unfortunate husband was a nephew of “An Important Community Leader.” Turns out the information came from relatives and friends of “A Slightly Less Important and Not At All Bitter About It Community Leader.” The rumours of confession were a time absorbing utter dead end. I never did find the person who saw the husband with the petrol can either. Not very surprising as her accelerant of choice was bar-b-q lighting fluid. I say her accelerant of choice because the scene and the forensics told their own sad tale. Depressed but not taking her medication for some weeks, she had gone to the loft, fetched down the bottle of lighter fluid and drenched herself in the bathroom. From there, she went to the main bedroom where a number of burned out matches on the carpet by the bed told their own tale of either frustrated failure or failure of nerve. More dead matches on the stair but no signs of ignition until we get to the kitchen.  She used a gas ring.

Well alight, she ran into the living room where her husband and two children were watching Saturday morning TV. Too late already, her husband knocked her to the floor and beat out the flames with his bare hands. Thats how he got the burns.  One child fetched a bucket of cold water and poured it over her. Another fetched the phone for the father which brings us back to where we came in.

I guess it is a lesson about a little learning being a dangerous thing. Everyone pushed the honour killing button straight away because everybody reads about honour killing and far fewer read about the actual suicide rates. You can usually tell one from the other, it just takes time, care and investigation.

Requiring Context

Thumper

It’s been a busy few days at the office. No names, no pack drill but I have been very occupied with finding a stranger rapist and I think we found him. It is now 3 days since I had any meaningful contact with my family. That is however “The Job” and if you can’t get fired up to work a stranger rape case, you should quit CID for something less taxing.

We got our man by Mark 1 bobbying and then had it confirmed on the DNA.

Three hours into the interview, it became, as it often does, an issue of consent. Did he get extraordinarily lucky with a woman he just passed in the street or is he a liar? The jury hasn’t even been sworn yet so I don’t really get to have an official opinion. He is not devastatingly handsome a world class comedian, famous or rich.

What I will say is that in every memorable interview, there is a “DOH” moment when you point out the flaw in the cunning plan or the killer fact that does not fit in with the story to the extent where it demolishes the story. This interview had a big “DOH” moment and the suspect’s face went through surprise, horror and anguish in about 3 seconds before he dropped his head and began to cry.

From then on, his left leg was trembling and shaking so much that every rabbit in the county was looking round nervously and fleeing for the burrow.

Quick, Its The Fuzz?

Cop U Like

Hat tip to the Binary Surfer for spotting this bit of blue sky thinking 10 year plannery. The full report can be downloaded from here. The key words seem to be “mixed economy of provision” and “user led culture” with some references to “10 year franchises” and elected police chiefs. As I read the deathless prose of this politcal kite flying paper, my eyes grew heavy and my sight grew dim…….

….”Right people” said the Chief Investigator, “these are the new corporate ties. You should already have your new id cards, see me after if they haven’t arrived. OK, thanks. The old CopperCo paperwork goes in the bin from today, from now on we are D-Tect Inc. You’ll get your induction packs at the meeting this afternoon. Now if we could just settle down for a minute, this is the new induction cast.”

He fired up the office wall screen and over some suitably dramatic music, a couple of young, attractive actors in shiny new visi-yellow and black easi-clean combat patrol kits were pictured driving through a bleak estate in their newly liveried Vauxhall Volta.

“Oh sorry people, that’s the one for Effico, they start providing the uniform response here next week. Jack could you sort this out? Whilst we’re waiting if you haven’t heard, there are still some teething problems with the custody suite. Apparently the CabooseCo people left things in a bit of a mess down there when they went bankrupt on their contract and whilst ClinkInc are doing their best, the new software isn’t really working yet so its back to paper.”

Having dialed up the right presentation, we watched in silence as our American Executive VP told us how proud we should be to be providing detection and investigation services in this great new franchise. Graphs showed how D-Tect Inc had been able to bring cheaper and more numerous detections everywhere they went. All I knew was that as one of the few ex-sworn officers left in the office, I was mighty glad that my pension and commutation had been ring-fenced when we were forced into the new contracts. I didn’t really talk about the pension in the office, not when so many colleagues had come in on the crappy company scheme.

The company presentation segued into another PR piece from the Chief of Policing Services. She’s up for re-election for another 5 years on a platform of visible, cost effective policing. There were the usual shots of her visiting places, seeing people, doing stuff and then a “to camera” bit about this visionary and strategic partnership with D-Tect over the next 10 years. We should all be prouder to serve our communities and  D-tect and the Chief would help guide us towards serving them better, (but for less money). No mention of the revised cost and performance targets yet but that’s only because her and D-Tect don’t want to scare the horses just yet.

Maybe I should have gone with the transfer to the National Security Agency (Regional Group C) with the other guys but you know, I always felt good about policing the place I live in and the commute into the city is a real killer. It hasn’t got any cheaper since the road tolls came in either. Thats where the “real cops” the ones with warrants are these days, Regional Group C Area Office 2, but we don’t see them round here much. I see some of the guys from the old days when they do come over to our place but they don’t have much time for chat and they always look sort of ground in tired.

Some of the Supervising Investigators have just swallowed the pill and lost their paid overtime and we had also lost  two “Junior Jacks” who had their contracts canceled early.  Good people but apparently not needed in the new process model. That’s real workforce flexibility for you. One thing that’s stayed the same, we still can’t go on strike. Damn but it was too hot in the office, well we had started hot desking 5 years ago when the Property Company doing the lease back on the Operations Centre hiked the rent and CopperCo moved us into the one office.

“OK people” said the Chief “Show’s over, back to work hahaha.” I laughed politely. “Oh and one last thing, I’m afraid we’re stuck with the old canteen franchise for another 2 years..Yes I know but they keep coming in with the cheapest bid.” ………

I woke sweating and uncomfortable

It could never happen here……….but then again it might.

An Effico Patrol Officer c. 2023

Smith #2

You may not believe it but at work today I was still thinking about the Smith appeal. Coming back to read such a lot of interesting comments was a genuine treat, thank you all.

I have a few additional observations

There is little in any of MOP’s posts that I take issue with. The idea of an independent CPS lawyer could be modified to a barrister to assist the judge as an “honest broker.” No axe to grind and perhaps more palatable to the wigs and gowns than C.P.S.

It is always good to hear opinions from the defence side of the tracks and I have personal sympathy with the views that Ben put forward. One of the very effective things that a defence can do is to test the credibility of a witness as a means to undermining the credibility of the evidence. Sometimes, for example keenly contested rape trials, this can leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth of all concerned and it can degenerate into character assasination and the parading of underwear. At the same time, it must be said that Iain Smith floated the idea that the anonymous testimony was organised by an embittered ex-girlfriend as a way of settling her score with him. Obviously without knowing the identity of the witnesses, there was no satisfactory way found for his defence to test this assertion.

In their judgment, the House of Lords did openly acknowledge that there is a live and serious problem with witness intimidation and that it was open to Parliament to legislate to allow witness anonymity in certain circumstances. They also pointed out that even if Parliament takes that course, the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court is against it.

Also in their judgment, they made reference to how successive reports into Northern Ireland failed to find a way past the common law to witness anonymity. I reflect that there is a good case to be made that in those conditions, the worst excesses of sectarian gangsterism went largely unchecked and in the end, the bad guys won a very handsome settlement at the negotiating table.

Jury trials are great and get it right a lot of the time, sometimes in the teeth of the evidence. It sometimes feels like they are the embodiment of Lord Denning’s rule “The little old lady always wins.” A properly directed jury is a powerful thing and we should do all we can to retain it. They are a decent weathervane as well. I think back to the change in the law regarding death by dangerous driving prompted by widespread refusal of juries to convict on the more serious charge of manslaughter.

Rogerborg and Hibbo raise the spectre of Police / noble cause corruption. Only a fool would deny that it goes on. I cannot support it from either side. The system we have is adversarial but relies on the particpants keeping within the rules. Take that away and it’s just another tyranny with added perversion of justice.

Paul argues “the thin edge of the wedge” and of course it is. My guess is that when anonymity became briefly usable, there may well have been some people who saw it as a method of settling old scores and doing down the opposition. Some may even have seen it as a short route to compensation (though how that might work I am not sure.) Some may have cut a deal for parole or reduction of existing sentence. I think everyone in the world is always a little suspicious at the jailhouse confession but still these are sometimes punted up to us as a lead to be followed. However, I also think that it allowed many witnesses who were in genuine well founded mortal fear to give truthful evidence safely without having to undergo the traumatic upheaval of witness protection. I also think that those people made up the majority. Lets try a thought experiment on the Smith case. Did the witnesses come to the police with their story ready burnished or did the police find them only as a result of diligent enquiries and manage to get them to say what they had seen only after much persuasion and the assurance of anonymity? I don’t know, but the trial judge did know or could properly have asked for the full circumstances. I believe he did. Context is important and we are not all thick cops who would jump on any band-wagon trailed before us. Score settling and perjury are issues that our Senior Investigating Officers are very alive to, more importantly so are trial judges. If we get legislation, my gut feeling is that it will be left to the judge on the facts of each case.

The bad character legislation has gone some way to allowing equality of arms in letting the jury know about the relevant bad character of defendants. The defence were always keen for the jury to hear all of the relevant evidence about witness convictions and police disciplinary findings but for some reason were very reluctant for a jury to hear evidence  of the defendants relevant convictions. It was one of those long held legal principles of the common law that previous convictions didn’t count, you came to every court appearance with a clean slate. This change was, I think a good thing and a good enough example of how a long established sacred cow was looked at carefully and sent to slaughter

The accepted wisdom / cliche about our system is that 10 guilty men go free so that one innocent man is not convicted. It is a noble idea but I think that if the 10 guilty men are murderous sociopaths, for example, there is room for a debate as to whether society wants to continue bearing that risk. They have a right to say no we don’t. The law is not set in medieval aspic, neither is it some shibboleth. We have set our faces against trial by combat, evidence by torture, the ducking stool, The Witchfinder General and the Star Chamber,they are all long gone. Sometimes, a law needs changing. Sometimes after very careful thought, a long held principle may be found to have become inappropriate to current circumstances.

Has this bulwark against the tyranny of the State become a bulwark protecting the tyranny of the street?

Reality Bites

Smith

Let’s tell it straight, the House of Lords were 100% right in law when they allowed the appeal against conviction  for Iain Davis because so much of the crucial evidence against him was given by totally anonymous witnesses.

It is alleged that Davis shot one man at a party and the same bullet went on to go through a wall and kill another man as well. The problem is that all the legal sources that the Law Lords could come up with pointed out that the defence would be at too much of  disadvantage in dealing with anonymous witnesses and their Lordships kept coming up against the Common Law and European Law and realised that you can’t have a really fair trial when the defendant doesn’t know the identity of the witnesses against him.

Put like that it all sounds quite sane and reasonable and yet this decision is the worst news for a while from a Judiciary that seems to feel itself fighting a rearguard action for preservation of the age old rights of fair trial and due process in the face of a government and public keen to make trials less fair, not unfair, just less fair. So for now, with little warning and rather against the run of play, we have seen a judge bosh a £6 million running murder trial with anonymous witnesses and we are told that there’s about 40 other cases / appeals in the pipeline. Even now, every hard faced thug put away by anonymised witnesses is being contacted by defence team “Fancy an appeal?” Too right they do, it’s  not like they’re paying or they have anything else to do.

The result of this finding is a clear message to organised crime groups, gangs and local thugs. Quite simply, the more lethal your retribution for grassing, the more murderous your reputation for dealing with witnesses, the more likely you can get away with crime because people will be too scared to ever give evidence against you.

Ah ha say some criminal defenders, the Police can always use the witness protection scheme and invite reluctant witnesses to assume a new name and leave it all behind for a beach in the Carribean maybe? No its more likely a hard to let council flat over a chippy, next to an amphet dealer with lousy schools and never seeing your friends and family again. Am I over-selling the experience here? So, wave goodbye to everything for a life of crud or…don’t talk to the police. Hmmm tough choice.

Luckily for us all, the Government are riding over the hill with emergency legislation. Why don’t I feel happy?

All I will say is, in future, it may be hard for the jury to put entirely out of their minds that the chap/s in the dock are very bad people who are scarey killers when all the main witnesses are behind screens with their voices altered to sound like a Dalek and people are calling them Mr X, Mr Y and Miss Z.

Well, I suppose in the end Society should give people the fairest trial we can, it’s just that when you have spent your years developing a deserved reputation as a stone faced killer and so have all your mates, we may not be able to make it as fair as your barrister or the Law Lords would like.

It is being punted by the wig and gown crowd as a tough issue, hard to strike a balance between the rights of the suspect to a fair trial, the rights of the witnesses and their families not to end up “in chalk” and the proper administration of justice which grinds to a halt where witnesses cannot be found. It is not tricky at all, either we have mechanisms sufficient to prosecute the very worst in society or we leave them alone to prosper and grow and we will see them copied and re-copied because what works gets done. And lets be plain, its not about balancing rights, its about deliberately choosing to reduce rights in certain circumstances. I would prefer it if, for a change, the rights reduced were not those of witnesses and victims.

Appearing At Crown Courts Everywhere

Aunt Maz

I thought it might be you. Now I know it was. Thanks for reading.

NJ

Take Careful Aim At Own Foot

Words fail when I read the following in the Times “Link To Article About People Who Didn’t Think” All we need now is a few more Facebook groups for Cops to have a good old laugh about injuring MOP’s and writing off expensive pieces of kit.

Well that was my initial thought until I realised just how big a glass house I was in and how big the stones are round here.

As my old driving instructor said “You can drive as fast as you like son, but you’re no f*cking good to anyone if you don’t get there.” It hasn’t got less true.

Pompous and holier than thou rant over

Not A Good Post For A Picture

The Weight

It is a nigh inviolable law of Policing that officers will be warned to attend Court on rest days or half way through nights week. This happens too often to be accidental. The general belief of Police officers is that when it comes to inconveniencing witnesses, we are first out of the hat. There is an apparent order of convenience with judges at the top, then barristers, defendant, non-police witnesses, then propping it all up, the Cops.   Once in attendance, we are often kept waiting around for as long as possible before being told that our evidence is not required.My opinion is that the court keeps us there because they are scared to be left alone in a building with the defendants. I could be wrong.

I have now spent more hours than I care to think of sitting round the uncomfortable scuffed public waiting areas of the various courts in our patch. I am not sure which is worse, the soulless built-to-a-price modern courts, washed up on the high water mark of moderno-stalinist public architecture or the relics of empire that inspired a little bit of awe in their time but now suffer from the massive dis-connect between the authority they proclaim and the the authority they are afforded.

Outside every court slouches a cluster of pavement spitters. Tracky bottoms tucked into white tube socks, Nike Air burglar boots, baseball caps set at jaunty angles, zirconia ear studs glinting. They are sucking down smoke and waiting to see if the witnesses arrive or if there is anybody they know to brag to or abuse. Inside, more of the same, girls with prams, the older mad and addicted of the repeat small time crime world and the odd frightened civilian summoned here for the first time. The lighting is always poor, the furniture always battered and the canteen always small and extortionately expensive. The ingenuity of generations of destroyers has clearly been put to work chipping away at the fabric of our courts with names and slogans scratched into any discrete surface. I am always happy to be reminded that “Daz ov Hatz woz on tour an buzzin 03″, that “Wazza iz a gras” (sic) or that “Apnay Roolz 06.” Ahh the erudition, the sheer poetry of the txt generations. Buzzing around their clients are the criminal solicitors all reassurance and clipped advice. Excuses, pleadings, explanations, mitigations and special circumstances all ready on the mental speed dial.

It is here that we see the phenomenon of the “Cracked Trial.” This is nothing to do with the popular baking soda / cocaine amalgam, it is what happens when we all turn up and the defendant throws his hand in at the very last minute. It is frustrating and maddening because for anyone with a passing familiarity with the system, it is a sure sign that justice has been badly served again. For civilian witnesses we know when they attend, that for half a day or more they will be sat around worried and fretting before being packed off home without much understanding of what just happened. We know that often they are there as levers to the mighty justice system and little else.

This is what happens on the day, more often than not

If every witness has turned up the defending barrister has a chat with the defendant. If the defence case is a non-starter or there is no defence, the barrister will do what is called “advising with sufficient firmness.” This boils down to the barrister and solicitor telling the client that the cause is hopeless and it would be best to plead guilty and avail themselves of the sentence discount available.

Now you would think that if someone has proclaimed their innocence or denied their guilt from arrest to the court door, there would be very little sentence discount to get. You might think that at this late stage, after all the work that has gone into the file, the inconvenience to the attending witnesses, the C.P.S. preparation, the lawyers hired to prepare for the case, the judge making space in the calendar, well you might think that this last minute acceptance of guilt would not do a person much good. You would be wrong. The way things are, you can sit on your hands as a defendant right up to the court doors and still retain the possibility of a very chunky discount for a guilty plea. Again it seems to me that the defence strategy is to keep the not guilty stance live for as long as possible in the hope that something will go awry in the prosecution case and  it will somehow go away. The refusal to move the discount threshold to a point significantly earlier in the process allows this to happen. Maybe it is the reason why it happens.

It can go further than that. There is an unspoken pressure, on the day, to settle the case, not to have a trial, not to empanel a jury. This pressure seems to operate on the C.P.S. to the point where I do wonder if they are settling cases in the belief that it will keep the judges sweet. Never mind the witnesses, the evidence or the failure to do justice, just as long as the case gets ground through the system cheaply and quickly.

The defence, particularly in assault and serious public order cases, will sometimes offer a guilty plea to a lesser charge. For section 18 GBH they will offer s20. For s2 Violent Disorder they will offer s3 Affray, for drug dealing they will offer a guilty plea to simple personal possession, for penetrative sexual assault they will offer a non-penetrative assault, for robbery they offer assault and theft.

If they can’t get a lower charge, they try for lower circumstances such as “He didn’t realise he had the broken bottle in his hand” or “He did assault him but he didn’t call him a Paki bastard.”  So it goes. The defence offer is always backed up with the implied or explicit threat of a very contested trial with every arguable point argued and every witness given the full Perry Mason. Sometimes the C.P.S. stand firm, sometimes they cave in, but it is always worth asking and it costs the defendant nothing.

The defence will even sound out the learned judge for an indication of sentence on a guilty plea.

If it sounds like plea bargaining, that’s because it is plea bargaining and it is currently the unofficial preserve of the boys and girls in the wigs.

That’s the adversarial system for you.

You Get What You Pay For

Justice For Criminals

So, according to Ms. Louise Casey and colleagues at the Cabinet Office, there is a simmering crisis of confidence in the Criminal Justice System. They must have been reading Police blogs. The people believe that the system is distant, unacountable, unanswerable. They know in their bones that it is set up to protect the interests of the criminal rather than the victim. Of course it is and it has been for a long time “10 guilty men go free so that an innocent man is not convicted etc etc etc.” That bit is important and if we ever lose sight of it we are all in trouble. Looks like another 12 months wasted of wasted navel gazing unless you count copping for an Order of The Bath.

Enough already, she’s telling us what we already know, that a very good majority of the people think that Criminal Justice is nothing but Justice for Criminals. Where is the meat? What are the headline proposals? What does Ms. Casey propose to address this general perception of injustice and unfairness? Let’s be clear, when three quarters of folk are feeling badly let down, we are not too far from the sharpening of pitch forks and the gathering of a big vat molten tar and the contents of the duck down duvet. These are the proposals from Ms Casey that I could find. Unhelpfully, I can’t find the actual report anywhere. If anybody has it in .pdf I would be eternally grateful for an e-mail because I feel a bout of Fisking coming on.

• Make those doing community punishments wear day-glo jackets.
• Make them do the whole lot in one go, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, not spread out over a year or two. If you are working, kiss goodbye to your evenings and weekends.
• Privatise the supervision of these communtity punishments
• Make it unpleasant work that the rest of the community wouldn’t like to do.
• Allow old folks to give evidence anonymously.
• PCSO’s to get more powers to detain people and give on the spot fines
• The appointment of a Peoples Crime Czar.

These are proposals of such shocking and shallow worthlessness  that I am errr shocked. Now I do hope it means an end to sentencing criminals to a bit of light weeding and decorating but I doubt it. As for the Peoples Crime Czar, if we need one of those, we are in the poo. We’re supposed to have two of them already. One is called Jack Straw and he lives at the Ministry of Justice. The other is the former teacher and reformed drug user who shafted me on the pay arbitration Do they need special help to listen? If they do, there are meant to be 42 little helpers and attendant authorities, and a childrens czar and another 3 for the regions and a sentencing panel and…and….well you get the idea.

And so we come to the NightJack contribution to the debate.

My belief is that we should use the Criminal Justice system to punish offenders, reduce the likelihood of them re-offending and to protect the public from determined and unrepentant repeat offenders.

Offend once or twice and repent and nothing too bad will happen to you. We will even help you get your life straightened out. Its a civilised society, we do civilised things. However, choose to be a career criminal or to commit a very serious offence and risk being a career prisoner. I believe in personal responsibilty for your own choices. That’s where I am coming from. Lets stop enabling and endlessly forgiving. Lets be ruthlessly realistic about reform and rehabilitation.Some will listen and learn and some will not, let them show their colours and then deal with them accordingly.

I believe that a judge should look at the criminal record, look at the offences and think what does that tell me about the person? Have they been given chances? Have they thrown them away? Pretty much everyone expresses remorse and regret pre- sentence, unless there is something very special to say, the pre-sentence report is not going to be very enlightening. Yes it is hard sending someone to prison for a long time but Judges are there to make those hard decisions for us. At the moment, they are not perceived to be doing that. We need to give them a framework and mandate to be harsher with the repeat and serious offender tempered with the knowledge that there have been effective tools offered to move those who want to away from criminality.

Fines
Stop fining people and charging costs against. It just creates more crime, more paperwork and more benefit claims. Just stop it. If you are not going to imprison, use a community punishment instead. If you want pleading not guilty to be a lottery, keep charging costs. People have a right to plead not guilty. If they do so in the teeth of the evidence, sentence them more heavily but charging costs…….come on.

Restorative Justice
The research is in. It works tolerably well when used appropriately and it is cheap as chips. What’s not to like?

Community Punishments
Should be the daily tool and stock in trade of the local Magistrate. They know their communities. Hard, fair, prison alternative for non compliance set out as part of the sentence so that the offender gets to make an informed decision. Where appropriate, this could even be go back to your studies  learn to read, write and do sums to the level expected of an 11 year old or go inside.  Drugs Treatment and Testing Orders with the emphasis on treatment. Whatever works best, whatever it costs, it will be cheaper than prison. If the treatment is give them heroin then I can live with that and it is cheaper than the testing. I would rather have the scarily bright eyed, mantis-looking smack head lying wasted in his bedroom on Diamorphine BP than out looking to mug my Mum for his next bag.

Prison
Only Judges should get to send people to prison. I think the evidence is in on short sentences, they aren’t worth it. Repeat convictions for less serious offences should lead quickly to very rapidly escalating terms of imprisonment. Limited chances once you have passed all attempts at community / non custodial rehabilitation. You want to play hard with society, we can play harder. It’s not about your good anymore, its about us. I am sick and tired of seeing the pattern of short sentence – fine – community – short sentence – fine – community played out case after case in court after court. Lets stop this silly merry-go-round. If you don’t want to go to prison for years and years then stop offending.

The prison sentence given is the prison sentence served subject to a maximum 25% discount available to the prison governor for good behaviour, good progress, efforts to rehabilitate yourself etc. Put the criminal’s salvation in his or her own hands. Make them responsible for their actions.

Offend in jail and it’s not governor’s punishment, its another trip back to court for a consecutive sentence if convicted.

Make prisons somewhere that you can get a decent education, decent mental health care, get drug free or drug maintained (your choice criminals) and where being reasonable, working hard and keeping the rules gets you somewhere and being an unpleasant bastard gets you cardboard furniture, cardboard food and a copy of the religious tome of your choice.

I could be barking up the wrong tree but that is a Criminal Justice System (Punishment and Penalties Division) that I could have confidence in.

Also About Choices

Darkness At The Edge of Town

I wrote about the PattonHall Estate back in March. It is on my way to the weekly shop and on a whim, I dropped in off duty last weekend to take a look round and see how things were 10 years on. This is a place that we wrested back out of the hands of the “Evil Poor” by the direct use of an informal Police and Community partnership.

It is safe to say that the estate is still in the safe hands of the Tenants Association. I saw lots of neat gardens, washing hung out to dry, hardly a piece of litter, happy laughing kids playing out, people washing their cars. There were many reliable visual indicators of a thriving community. The Housing Association has even built some sheltered accomodation for the elderly where the low rise single occupancy rat nests used to be. It felt like what it was, a good place to live, bring up children and grow old with dignity but without fear.

Two miles up the road is where the “Evil Poor” roost. Now I don’t say that everybody who is poor is evil or that all evil people are poor. When I say “Evil Poor” I mean the multi generational families of wasters, self sundered from the worlds of work, education, law or personal responsibility. I mean the people who have entirely bought into a life of chaos, violence and crime. All Police bloggers end up writing about them and we all know them and their works. There festering on the edge of town is the Cannonrail Estate, bodged together using cheapest available material  in the early 1970′s by an ambitious council. They have never been able to fill it and half of it has been knocked down and turfed over these past 10 years. What remains are warrens of boxy “modern terraces” built using a cheap yellow brick that has stained badly.You can see the original idea, modern dwellings, open spaces, play areas, shops, library, community centre, it was all there.

I went there for a look as well.

Nobody was washing their cars here, they have had them up on blocks, for years. No kids playing out, just the odd skinny abandoned devil dog trotting up and down looking for trouble.There were rotting disposable nappies in gardens and in the street. Every windy corner was a-rattle with empty lager cans and fag buts. Dog shit, broken bottles and deep motorbike and car tyre tracks disfigured the dying, untended and unused football pitches. These were Euro funded and opened with such pride and hope just a few years ago. Every aparatus on the childrens’ playground was bent, broken and useless. Every tile in the happy happy mosaic installed at the opening has been lovingly chipped, broken and destroyed. Nothing stays good on Cannonrail. The council had given everybody new wooden garden fences last year and within a month they were ripped apart and useless. Nobody living there gives a flying one. They didn’t care about the old broken fences in the first place.

Every time a tenant moves on, you need a fumigation crew and a complete redecoration at minimum. Every third house is “tinned up” to prevent the locals getting in to strip out anything left of value. It doesn’t have to be like that, it’s not the place, it’s not the poverty or the local schools, there are jobs. there are so many social workers to help you, but no, in the end it is the people. In Cannonrail is concentrated the most rapacious of the “Evil Poor” and all they can do is destroy and spoil everything around them. Its not a minority of anti social trouble makers causing the problems here because damn near every resident is anti-social. Maybe I am demonising them and their children. Well, that’s what I do to demons.

There are the shops, an off-licence and a general store, each festooned with after-market security additions, razor wire, steel doors, cameras, security lights and the like. The shopkeepers always look on edge. Outside, burnt out bins and more of the detritus of living the “Evil Poor” life, a broken child’s bike abandoned, pizza boxes, crushed cigarette packets and half a dozen black bin bags weeping dirty cheap kiddies clothes.

There is a Community Centre that, if anything, is more forbidingly spikey than the shops. Nobody from the Community goes there but it gives the social workers somewhere to hide from their clients during the day. The saddest thing there is the shell of the little branch library, closed, tiles stripped from the roof and still lying broken in the high weeds around. It never stood a chance.

These are the places of the people that we are talking about. These are the homes they return to after a day or a night spent ruining yours. This is where they swagger and brag of the beatings and robbings. This is where the drugs go. This is the pathology. This is where the Evil Poor live. Even when the sun is cracking the paving stones, this is the darkness at the edge of town.

Its All About Choices