24 Hours In Police Custody

[Kompany Car]

Whilst I don’t necessarily disagree, something will need to change if we’re going to put more and more into prison. There are 80000 currently in jail with the prison population of England & Wales quadrupling in size between 1900 and 2018, with around half of this increase taking place since 1990. Prisons are at 100% capacity and are unlikely to be funding the building of anymore in the immediate future and, even if they did, staffing them would be an enormous challenge.
Will sending more people to prison actually work though?
The Americans might provide a salutary lesson. Our prison population is about 1600 per million why compares to the USA with 7000 per million and, like here, a massive increase since 1990. A fifth of every prisoner in the world is in jail in America and yet their crime rates show no signs of declining whatsoever.
As well as almost 2 million in prison there are nearly 5 million on parole or on probation.

Asking for more tax payer cash might be a bit of a problem as well although, at about £50000 a year to keep someone in prison maybe we could find a different way to spend that cash and try to keep them out by reducing offending?

NB. The government have just asked that 400 police cells be made available to manage overcrowding. Surprisingly enough, they’ve blamed barristers. Even our friends up the East Lancs Road accept more responsibility than this shambolic government.

There in lies the issue, you need to get someone into a stable environment to resolve the root cause. 50k isn’t enough, Norway spend around 90k per inmate and most of this is spent on training, attending to mental health issues and reintegrating them into society. This sounds a lot but if it cuts reoffending, and you aren’t incarcerating as many people, in the long term it’s actually cheaper. Less offending also reduces court cost, the number of judges, solicitors, barristers needed and potentially police.

You have to break the loop of reoffending but also ensure that there is a deterrent which also allows the victims to see that justice has been served.

The other approach is not worry about overcrowding, lock them up and throw away the key, Bangkok Hilton style. But as Dostoyevsky wrote “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Manslaughter and murder do require a dead body though, so they're not relevant to this case and I'm not sure why you brought them into it.

He could have been charged with GBH, but Causing serious injury by driving already covers physical harm which amounts to grievous bodily harm.

And you'd know better than me but looking at the guidelines this would probably be category 3 low culpability GBH which would give a 2 year sentence which is what he ended up with.

I brought them into it to demonstrate that prosecuting the criminal use of a car for violent ends isn’t limited to the offences you identified, depending on the outcome.

I think you are wrong about where this offence would sit in the sentencing guidelines as there are arguably two aggravating features (the first for sure)

1. Use of weapon or weapon equivalent (namely the car, absolutely nailed on)
2. Intention to commit more serious harm than actually resulted from the offence (would guess it was hard to argue against that given the use of the car, but don’t know enough about the facts to be sure).

Which would push the offending into higher culpability.

So, higher culpability, lesser harm: starting point six years.

It’s complicated by the fact that as an attempted GBH the injuries would be (by definition) less than ‘serious‘, plus the offence would be inchoate so probably a starting point of three to four years at a guess.

tbh, it’s been a while and I’m very much out of the loop now, but my instincts on stuff like this is usually broadly correct.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Manslaughter and murder do require a dead body though, so they're not relevant to this case and I'm not sure why you brought them into it.

Not true. They require evidence that a specific person was killed in the absence of a dead body.

People have been convicted of murder when bodies have never been found.

 

[paulchapo]

The prisons are full!

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

The prisons are full!

Have you got a dog cage at your gaff we can keep them in?

 

[N1985]

On a side note, if ever you are dragged in by plod keep your trap shut until you have legal representation.

Spot on this. Say absolutely fuck all to them. Let your solicitor earn his wage

 

[Slipper One]

Agree it seems light, and I can’t comment on the particulars of any mitigation, but that will have been sentenced separately and the fact the offence was inchoate will have been a significant factor.

it’s a familiar refrain that sentencing is too soft but sentences have increased significantly in the last ten years and hugely over the last 30, and yet it doesn’t seem to be having the desired effect, and yet people still cry for tougher and tougher sentencing. What was it Einstein said?…

One of the problems is cases like this and the way they are reported as the norm; they are not. All they do is reinforce people’s perception that the system is too soft, rather than isolated examples frequently taken out of context.

I would direct you to the points I made about the gypsy issue.

They are a menace in the area that I once lived in, where they steal at will and the police do nothing to apprehend stolen property or the culprits.

My cousin's husband was alerted to people at the farm, went out to address it and was beaten up with his vehicle damaged as a result. The police were not remotely interested in following it up, yet he had the registration number of the vehicle used by the thieves.

An ATV was stolen from a property and it was later seen at a gypsy encampment. The police were notified of where it was and the details of it, yet they wouldn't even investigate it.

A trailer was in the process of being stolen from a farm and when the farmer said he would call the police, he was told to go ahead and do it, because they would come back and burn his house down if he did.

Another break-in was recorded on the security cameras and the gypo's were waving at the camera while they were getting the door open and making no effort to conceal their faces. Again the vehicle registration number was on video, yet nothing was done to bring these people to account.

Part of the issue may be sentencing, or lack of it, perceived or otherwise, but stiffer sentences won't stop these people. They are professional criminals. However, a more concerted effort by the police would go some way to restoring the general public's faith. Without the police doing their bit to support the community against theft, then it's only natural that people to take matters, rightly or wrongly, into their own hands.

 

[paulchapo]

Have you got a dog cage at your gaff we can keep them in?

This isn't the kinky thread lol.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

This isn't the kinky thread lol.

Just turning the argument the racists use about immigrants on it's head.

Surely people who want to lock up more prisoners should be willing to offer space or at least do some free shifts at strangeways.

 

[paulchapo]

Just turning the argument the racists use about immigrants on it's head.

Surely people who want to lock up more prisoners should be willing to offer space or at least do some free shifts at strangeways.

That has to be the worst analogy I have ever seen on here and I've seen a lot lol.