Is Britain on the brink of anarchy? The police certainly seem to think so. On the day of the coronation, they arrested three volunteers who wore rape alarms to protect women, not scare horses – and six anti-monarchists who had previously been in contact with authorities about their plans. Holding a sign that says “Not my king”, it turns out, can get you thrown in a police cell for 16 hours.
This incident shows what can happen when governments interfere with justice. The new Public Order Act and the Policing, Crime, Sentences and Courts Act gave ill-defined powers to the police, some of which were never requested. Scotland Yard, which was facing a complex operation, expressed its regrets. It’s dishonest to The politicians to blame the police, claiming that their legislation was simply intended to prevent protesters from obstructing traffic; it has created many new offences, some of which are dangerously vaguely worded.
Anti-protest powers are just part of a larger picture of successive governments’ interference in a criminal justice system that fails for lack of funds, even as they rack up headline-grabbing demands. newspapers. Raising minimum sentences is an old favourite, a cheap way to respond to outrage over certain crimes – most recently child cruelty and eco-activism. The criminalization of language is another: a decade ago comedians clashed with the government over hate speech laws they feared would ban humor. Today the clash between politicians and legal principles has reached a new frenzy, with Scottish lawyers vowing to boycott plans by the Scottish National Party to abolish jury trials in rape cases.
Rape is a very serious crime, which causes lifelong damage to the victims. Public institutions are rightly haunted by egregious failures, including the appalling treatment of hundreds of girls who were ignored as they were abused by grooming gangs in places like Rotherham. Plaintiffs must wait up to three years in England and four years in Scotland for their case to be heard.
By pursuing more convictions, however, the SNP has gone too far. The Scottish government has decided that the acquittal rate in rape cases is too high, as the conviction rate in Scotland is 51% for rape and attempted rape, compared to 91% for other offences. He believes juries are influenced by “rape myths”, such as the idea that prior sexual contact between parties may indicate consent, and has launched a pilot project to replace juries with a single judge. But the Scottish Solicitors Bar Association believe that ignores the fact that rape is notoriously difficult to prove. The largest study of jury cases does not support the claim that jurors are incapable of weighing competing accounts.
The anger of the Scottish lawyers I spoke to is searing. The judges fear the SNP plan will put intolerable pressure on them to be convicted, impinging on their responsibility to act independently. Others say serving on a jury is the only time most ordinary people have a role in the democratic apparatus, aside from voting, and most take their obligations very seriously.
The Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill would undermine two of the oldest and most fundamental principles of law: the presumption of innocence and the right to a jury trial.
With the seven largest Scottish courts refusing to take part in the pilot, the SNP will likely have to back down. But the tendency to portray all complainants in rape cases as ‘victims’ before any case has been heard has also infected Westminster. This is yet another example of MPs being cavalier with language that has been crafted over centuries to preserve fairness.
Politicians had better spend their time fixing the criminal justice system, which leaves so many people in limbo that it no longer serves the public.
The backlog has reached intolerable levels. Legal centers and courts have closed. Legal aid has been cut so savagely (even more so in England and Wales than in Scotland) that many vulnerable people cannot find a lawyer to represent them. Sneaky changes to the rules have forced many to pay crippling fees, even if paid. Meanwhile, most Britons have given up on asking the police to investigate the theft. The recent lawyers’ strike ended with an improved wage settlement from the government; but many criminal lawyers have told me they still fear their generation will be the last to take on the criminal legal aid job.
After national security, access to justice is the most fundamental responsibility of government. But if you are accused of a crime, if your home or store is broken into, if you have been abused, you may find that justice is slow or even unavailable. Prisons, meanwhile, are overcrowded, making a mockery of the two main parties’ political grandstanding over longer sentences.
Last weekend, the nation stood in reverence at an ancient ceremony, but on the streets outside, the state flouted age-old principles of free speech and fairness. The Scottish government is trying to lock up people who could be acquitted by their peers. Westminster has vastly expanded the powers of the police to silence those they don’t like. The real danger for our society is not the militant demonstrators, against whom there were already plenty of laws. They are politicians. If governments only asked themselves what their successors might do tomorrow in power, with the rights they ceded today, they might act with more caution and respect.
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