Prariepundit is running a story from The Telegraph:
Two fathers have condemned the criminal justice system after they were arrested and thrown into a police cell for trying to prevent a fight involving a gang of youths.
Christopher Dale, 38, and Arthur Parkes, 29, decided to intervene when they heard that a group of boys planned to catch and beat up another youth.
They made a citizen’s arrest of the two ring leaders, aged 12 and 14, and held them while Mr Dale’s wife called the police.
But when officers arrived it was the men who were handcuffed and led away after the boys accused them of assault.
What followed was a nine month “nightmare” in which the men faced losing everything as the Crime Prosecution Service refused to drop the case.
Their ordeal only ended in court when a magistrate finally decided there was no case to answer, “It has been an absolute nightmare,” said Mr Dale yesterday, an engineer who fits fire alarms and a trained pilot.
…
CPS district crown prosecutor Peter McNaught said: “We considered this case very carefully. However, in all the circumstances, we consider that it was in the public interest to bring this case.”
As I said, they’re all idjits.
[hat tip: Larwyn]
For the first time in history, British jails are full. Not a cell to be had anywhere:
Even court and police cells were packed as the number of prisoners rose to 82,068 - almost 100 above the official safety limit.
The crisis is expected to trigger the early release of thousands of muggers, burglars and other convicts.
In a desperate attempt to buy time, Jack Straw begged magistrates to imprison fewer offenders.
The Justice Secretary said the courts were giving short jail terms when community punishments would be better.
But magistrates refused point-blank to help him out of the shambles - saying they would continue to hand down whatever sentence they saw fit.
The Magistrates’ Association said it did not react kindly to being placed under “pressure” by ministers.
In other words, it’s not our problem, Jack. It sounds as though not only are the jails overflowing, but the system is broken, too. Perhaps the Parliament could begin overhauling its criminal code. They could start with their draconian “Hate Speech” crimes.
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Tory spokesman Nick Herbert said: “The prison system is now in genuine crisis. This is not the fault of magistrates but the result of sheer incompetence by this Government.”
Mr. Herbert is spot on. But what does this Government plan to do about its “sheer incompetence”? Any ideas, Mr. Herbert? How about jailing a few of the magistrates for “Careless and Uppity Attitudes?” They might change their minds…umm, I mean their snippy attitudes.
The scope of the crisis was revealed in a Ministry of Justice statement that the number of inmates had reached an all-time high of 82,068.
The total operational capacity - based on governors’ advice on what is safe for “control, security and proper operation” - is only 81,972, including more than 350 places in police cells and courts.
In a bid to get through the weekend, inmates jailed yesterday were crammed into prison spaces normally considered out of bounds by governors.
But next week even this overspill is likely to be exhausted.
Well, simply have any others remanded to the homes of the magistrates. An easy solution that offends the fewest people.
Plans have been drawn up to extend an existing early release scheme called End of Custody Licence, which lets convicts out 18 days before their sentence reaches even the halfway point.
It was implemented last June and has led to the early release of 16,000 inmates - one of whom has since committed a murder.
Extending ECL to 30 days would free hundreds of spaces, but Downing Street is nervous about such a drastic step for fear of yet more damage to Labour’s reputation on law and order.
They are concerned about how they’ll look? Good Lord, these politicians are idjits. Idjits sans principle or integrity.
Officials at the Ministry of Justice, however, believe all other options have been exhausted.
In the past week alone, they have bussed scores of inmates to open jails and announced a scheme to send foreign offenders home nine months early.
Here’s a suggestion: send all foreign offenders home when they are found guilty. That ought to free up scads of space, no? This is not a matter of common sense, though. This is about whose turf is being trampled upon:
But the panic measures have either come too late or achieved too little.
Mr Straw was reduced to appealing direct to the courts, echoing a similar Government request in January 2007 to jail only the most dangerous villains, which itself sparked uproar among the judiciary. He said: ‘We have 350 magistrates courts in England and Wales.
“If each one ends up sentencing one extra prisoner a week to jail then we have got the increase we face.
“There are effective alternatives in terms of non-custodial penalties which actually have a better record in terms of preventing re-offending.”
Sez you, Jack. Your colleagues on the bench don’t take kindly to being pushed. Here’s the huffy response from the Chairman:
But Cindy Barnett, chairman of the Magistrates’ Association, said the courts must have the freedom to impose sentences as they saw fit.
She added: “We don’t use custody lightly, we use it when it is so serious that nothing else can be justified and we must make that individual decision.
“I think it would be very unfortunate if anything was said that is seen as pressure on individual sentences. I think that would be wrong.”
Pooh. Rework your darned criminal code so people like Lion Heart don’t have to face seven years for what they write on their blogs.
Tories accused the Government of “catastrophic mismanagement”.
Mr Herbert said: “They have ignored repeated warnings, failed to build adequate capacity and their belated building programme has fallen behind schedule.”
He said there must be no extension of ECL.
Colin Moses of the Prison Officers’ Association accused ministers of “total mismanagement”.
He warned: “The prisons are not safe. We have increased numbers yet again with no change in regime and no increase in staffing. This is risk management at the highest level.”
When in history were prisons “safe”? They’re full of criminals, you twit.
Ministers have promised to build an extra 14,000 prison places by 2014, including giant Titan jails holding 2,500 inmates.
But the prison population is already outstripping projections made as recently as December. It means the building effort is unlikely to be sufficient.
They say 350 magistrates belong to that Association. If they each took five home prisoners - but only those they’ve sentenced themselves, of course…hmm. That’s a start.
Then the members of the Labour party could do their share to ease the crunch…I wonder how many each of them could take? Better make it no more than three.
As I’ve said before, England is showing all the signs of a failed state.
20 comments:
In fact, it is very difficult to get into prison in Briton in the first place, so there is no room at all to detour less serious offenders as there might be in the United States.
Since a certain mean political class in America insisted upon sending criminals to prison and keeping them there longer, the totally unexpected discovery was made that, with more criminals in prison, there was less crime.
So by all means the British should, with their prisons overflowing, not send more criminals to prison so that...ah, I can't seem to make that work.
A legitimate government would assure people it was their primary duty to uphold the law and protect the people at any cost. They would then use deportation on any immigrant group with above-average criminal tendencies, build more prisons, and use the death penalty to clear out some more prison space while deterring crime in the first place.
An illegitimate government would ban citizens from any kind of self-defense, throw in jail anyone who criticizes immigrant crime levels or government policy, release all prisoners with a slap on the wrist, and raise taxes to buy off more criminals with jizya/tribute so they don't have to go through the bother of mugging citizens directly. They would assure the world that their primary duty was the upholding of 'human rights' and combating 'hate,' if that meant the genocide of the entire indigenous people, so be it.
Star Chambers, coming to a lawless state near you.
But, But, the government gave the police the most possible leeway to avoid charging petty crimes such as assault and breaking and entering. and this didn't work?
I wonder what a breakdown of the offenses of those jailed will show?
WEll, once agai the problem is the unacknolwedged influence of the EU over everything. Our provincial government are desperate to look like they're still in actual control of everything, so they don't mention it the fact that immigration is an EU competence, so there's no way to actually throw criminals out of the countr and keep them out. They'll just pop back in again on the next train. Criminal justice is also pretty much an EU competence now - they've reserved under the process whereby if the EU makes any directive in an area of law, that entire area of law becomes an EU competence, and subsequently the national governments are only allowed to exercise "subsidiarity", that is they can make law in that area only as far as the EU doesn't make law in that area. The result is that our criminal law can only be fiddled around the edges. Substantive changes can't be made to the sentencing for certain crimes and certain policies on what constitutes a crime in are now dictated by the EU.
Prisons can be built, though... the only reason they aren't building them is because they're a bunch of idiots.
Also, I know it feels good to do it, but can we not throw this "failed state" around so much? We're occupied by a foreign power, not "failed".
The following should have been written not by me, but by Dymphna;
she has the necessary arguing skill, brightness, stringency and acerbity.
Eighter she will endorse my suggestion or knock it full of holes.
Life is thrilling.
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What the h*ck is actually an idjit?
Of course, originally it is sloppy pronounciation.
Perhaps it is used to avoid being indicted for calling somebody an idiot;
it even might indicate that a person in an indeterminate way is an 'extreme idiot'.
I should like to suggest a 'new' use for this excellent word "idjit".
As everybody knows we are surrounded be idiots these days.
(1) There are the pitiable, ordinary idiots - extreme fools with a congenital mental handicap and a psychological/psychiatric diagnose as well as an established very low IQ.
(2) There are the 'useful idiots' (à la Lenin) of avarage talent - individuals who, maybe also for filthy lucre but for no rational reason, sympathize with and allways are willing to do their bit for those in power, for a strange political movement, for Fidel, CAIR, EXPO, HAMAS, the poor muslims etc.
(3) There are the great many fools, duffers, blockheads, dummköpfe and trottels; individuals with insufficient or weak to normal(?) mental capacities who just do not understand or allways misunderstand - very often due to limited knowledge, education, interest. These people are no real idiots but are often seen as or thoughtlessly called idiots.
(4) Finally there are - the IDJITS! People who in now way are real IDIOTS but in most of their doings act as FUNCTIONAL IDIOTS. These people often are competent, clever and well integrated individuals with a high IQ. In spite of these gifts they do not "afford" or allow themself to be influenced by logic, rationality, national loyality, established knowledge, scientifical and historical facts, empirical experiance and so on ad infinitum. Their importent agenda cannot be combined with such trivial things.
They can be an Archbishof of Canterbury, a Prime Minister of Sweden or Mayors of Brussels or London, they can be any officiel of the EU, editors of prominent papers from NYT to Dagens Nyheter, they can be Parliament Members in Holland or in Sweden. There are thirteen to the dozen of them. They need a name of their own - we cannot go on calling them just idiots - it will be a continous insult to the poor, real idiots. How about IDJITS?
Graham
It might be argued ,that in order to get occupied by a foreign power with without even noticing it ,you have to be a "failed state" ,even if this is in another variation of the idea than the usual 3.world anarchi.
In order for police in Britain or Denmark to deal effektively with criminals in general and especialy with imigrant gangs many things have to change :
1. public opinion " in the street"
2.public opinion as expressed in "the mass media"
3.party politics
4.the way a judge is apointed to the high courts,which eventualy determines the frame-of-mind of the whole legal system
5.the organisational (comand) structure of the police.
6.the recruiting/educational policy of the police
In Denmark we have seen,that 1-3 can change very nicely in the right circumstances,but in order to change 4-6 ,the change in 1-3 have to PERSISTENT over a very long period,long enough to change the whole political atmosphere and to bring in new and very different peoble to head the legal system.
Sadly ,things wil probably have to get a lot worse before this can happen.
Even in Israel the high court is a bastion of PC'ness, while peoble suffer a much higher level criminal/terror acts.
In the interest of conserving a great English tradition...
Political prisoners should have the option of being deported to Australia along with their entire families.
There is however ample room in prison for people in thier eighties who do not pay thier poll tax.
'IDJIT' (idiot) comes from the cartoon character Yosemite Sam.
Likewise. 'MAROON' (moron) comes from Bugs Bunnny.
There are lots of little gems like that to be found in Looney Tunes characters, Foghorn Leghorn perhaps has the best library of quotations regarding sheer idiocy.
The UK Police are idiots? As they are drawn from the general population of course there must be a few, perhaps disproportionately so due to the Egalitarian recruitment policy but it is unfair and unreasonable to tar them all with the same brush.
Have a look at a few of the posts and the comments at Inspector Gadget , they clearly demonstrate that the front line Police are required by their senior officers to selectively enforce the law so as to generate statistics beneficial to the Zanu-Labour Government.
A fair number of the Zanu-Labour cabinet members were communists, for example John Reid. That they now enjoy plush lifestyles compared to the masses is no different to the Communist Party members in the USSR. You will find famous UK barristers and judges in this Compendium of Communist Biography by surname . I would hazard a guess that there may be a few from the Crown Prosecution Service there as well.
ln asks:
What the h*ck is actually an idjit?
Of course, originally it is sloppy pronounciation.
Perhaps it is used to avoid being indicted for calling somebody an idiot;
it even might indicate that a person in an indeterminate way is an 'extreme idiot'.
"idjit" was the word my mother used. At least during the time she was growing up in Ireland, it was a common term and reserved for the kinds of people you describe, especially perhaps "useful idiots", which is not something she would have been familar with. Were she alive, the Archbishop of Canterbury would definitely have made the A list for "idjits."
It was also the term reserved for her daughter, who had the annoying habit of leaving the lids loose on jars she had used, thereby causing the next user to spill the contents if they were so unfortunate as to pick the jar up by the lid.
With her it was pronounced as though it were "eedjit" -- and has to be said with a certain level of annoyance implying that God has permitted such brainless people to exist.
I think that as the cultural lexicon has become degraded, "idjit" has been largely replaced with that ubiquitous phrase "a**hole", which itself is most often preceded by an Anglo-Saxon word used in the vernacular to describe sexual congress. To my thinking, that phrase has much less resonance than "idjit."
That headline about the police being "idiots" was left intact because it was what Prariepundit used in his post. He probably isn't famililar with the term "idjits"...
Thanks for your methodical fisking of the word.
"Fisking" is a wonderful American neologism. I don't know if the British use it.
Bert Rustle --
Thank you so much for the link to Inspector Gadget. Wonderful stuff.
Besides, I am partial to any officer who likes cats...cool guy.
I am going to link to him, but first I have to cull the blogroll some. People do quit blogging and it's annoying to readers when they click on dead links...
In memory of Robert Fisk.
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I think I am totally misunderstood. I am used to it, but this time it was not required.
Dymphna thanks me for my "methodical fisking of the word"(idjit).
What is 'fisking'?
"Blogosphere slang describing detailed point-by-point criticism that highlights perceived errors, disputes the analysis of presented facts, or highlights other problems in a statement".
Have I misbehaved once again?
No.
In all modesty I argued for a new and productive use of the little word IDJIT.
To be used on all those FUNCTIONAL IDIOTS with high IQ who are shaping our daily and future world and who are paving the way for the caliphate. "They need a name of their own - we cannot go on calling them just idiots - it will be a continous insult to the poor, real idiots."
Dymphna, how about IDJITS?
ln--
Hmm...I wasn't aware that you misbehaved at all, much less "once again." Is there some wonderful naughtiness out there, created by you, that I missed? Oh, dear.
I know the word "fisk" is mostly used in a perjorative sense, but it's a good short word for any kind of close analysis. I should have chosen another word, like maybe "analyze" but that's 3 syllables. "Fisk" needs to expand its definition to include other possibilities.
______
PS That map you sent is gorgeous, especially for the geographically challenged, of which I am one. Too bad it's too big to print. A lot of equally ignorant Americans would find it useful.
Does anyone know of a site that has regional maps that are small (400+ or so pixel wide limit) that we might use for geography illustrations when regional news crises pop up...just a example would be the wannabe separatist part of Spain. I realize that I don't know it...
Dymphna wrote ... Thank[s] ... for the link to Inspector Gadget. ...
To link or not to link, that is the question. I take the view that whether someone is a National Socialist, International Socialist, Zionist, or a lobotomised Benedictine Monk has absolutely no bearing on the validity of his argument or the veracity of his references. Why? Because it is by this hopeless method of argument that those in possession of empirical facts lose arguments to those who smear, name call, imply guilt by association and state blatant denials of observable, replicable phenomena.
In my opinion “if you can't say it to someone's face, it's not worth saying”. Clearly many blogs are not written with this consideration in mind, which makes linking problematical. However, if you want to encounter “out of the box” analysis, it is possible that you may encounter those who are literally “out of their box”, though of course those “out of their box” are not necessarily so all of the time. I therefore take the view that one is linking to a particular argument of a particular individual, no more, no less.
Another UK link is The Magistrate's Blog Maximum sentence available to magistrates ... today ... 180 days. Defendant pleads guilty (most do) so one-third reduction. That's 120 days. That is automatically reduced by half, leaving 60 days. Current early release is 18 days, leaving 42 days to serve. ... If, as suggested in the press, early release is extended to 30 days, then the most that magistrates can hand down will be effectively 28 to 30 days - roughly four weeks. ...
Muslims are about 3% of the total population of the UK, yet contribute greatly to "diversity" in crime.
Almost 10% of the prison population are Muslim, two-thirds of whom are young men aged 18-30 (source date 2004. I think that this figure is outdated)- the figure is more likely to be in the vicinity of 15%. Theodore Dalrymple, who used to work as a doctor in British prisons, stated that it was most unusual to find Hindus or Sikhs in prison, but the prisons were full of Muslims.
Were it not for Muslims, there would be no pressure on the prison service. The usual suspects then would be sent to jail, and that would make society safer.
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Then we have this rather sad tale - a measure of the moral abyss that society has sunk to
Foster couple challenges homosexuality laws
Lawyers are to seek a judicial review of a decision by social workers to ban a Christian couple from fostering young children because they refused to sign up to new gay equality laws.
Owen and Eunice Johns wanted foster children to go to church with them
The action against Labour-controlled Derby City Council is likely to become a test case for the Government's Sexual Orientation Regulations. Social workers rejected an application by Eunice and Owen Johns, who have four grown-up children, to be foster parents because they refused to agree to tell any children in their care that homosexual lifestyles were acceptable.
The couple, who have been married for 39 years, had applied to offer weekend respite care for foster children under the age of 10.
But the adoption panel was also unhappy that the couple was adamant that any child in their home would have to go to church with them on Sundays. Mrs Johns, a retired nurse, is a Sunday school teacher.
Foster couple challenges homosexuality laws
Gaeidhil says 'in the interests of conserving a great English tradition all political prisoners should be deported to Australia.'
Australia says...you look after your own problems buddy, we already have enough criminals running our governments thankyou!
To Jack Straw, Aka The Weasel. If your prisons are overflowing do what we do here in New South Wales and have done so for over ten years. Load up a few Prison Trucks and transport your overflowing prisoners between the various State Jails, perferably overnight of course, so that a bed does not have to be provided for each inmate. When one truck arrives at a Jail with prisoners another one leaves the same Jail loaded up with prisoners to another Jail etc, etc, ad finitum. Terry
And when the Inspector General of Prisons does his yearly report to the State Government then he can confidently, with maybe just a little porky thrown in, tell the Corrective Services Minister that our prisons are coping and there is no further need for any more prisons to be built!
How about they just build some prisons? I know my own state (Virginia) is pretty notorious for incarceration, with a state prison population of about 33,000 for a total population of about 7.6M (note: that doesn't include those in Federal prisons), but to think a nation of 60.7M is going to only 82,000 prisoners is just crazy.
No denying that. It's been a long-standing policy for decades, now, in the face of massive demand for more prisons from the majority, or a plurality at the very least. The problem is that most politicians read the guardian or the indy, and listen to high-minded academics with strange theories about the whole thing.
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