Whatever the rights and wrongs of the original story, the fact is that Lord Browne had admitted that he lied under oath.

I can't think of a single reason why he should not be prosecuted for perjury. It's clearly in the public interest. And he has admitted a major offence. And we are all equal under the law, aren't we? It will be fascinating to see how this pans out.

(2)

John Sweeney is something of a hero if mine. A one-man justice machine, he is one of the few people in (to define it broadly) public life who is entirely a force for good, righting some terrible injustices. Do have a read of his piece in yesterday's Sunday Times, on his latest investigation into Angela and Ian Gay:

Domimic Lawson has a superb piece today on prisons:

Between 1993 and 2001 - New Labour adopted the Michael Howard approach - the average number of people in prison rose by about 45 per cent. It is notoriously difficult to know which crime figures to believe, but the British Crime Survey, which the current government regards as the most reliable, shows that between 1995 and 2001 recorded crimes fell from more than 19 million to 12.6 million.

Even if you are of the view that prison has no deterrent effect, you still can not dismiss this correlation as a coincidence. The Home Office report, Making Punishments Work, estimates that the average offender carries out 140 offences a year: the figure for those with an admitted drug problem is 257 offences per year. You do the math: it's clear that a large slice of the dramatic drop in crime - and commensurate reduction in the misery of victims - recorded in the British Crime Survey was down to the "incapacitation" effect of prison.

...I can understand why many commentators are distressed that we imprison a greater proportion of the population than any other European country save Luxembourg; it does not speak well of us as a nation. The less-quoted statistic, however, is the prison population as a proportion of crimes committed. That paints a more pertinent picture. In England and Wales 12 people are imprisoned for every 1,000 crimes committed. In Spain the figure is 48 per 1,000; in Ireland it is 33 per 1,000. Both those countries have much lower crime rates than ours.

I am always banging on about this latter statistic, and how it is the only one which counts. If you can hang on until 2008, you can read even more about it (and many other things, too) in my new book.

I've always found Camila Batmanghelidjh to be a rather preposterous figure. Yes, I accept that she does some good works. But whenever I've heard her speak she has come out with the most stupid 'it's not their fault' excuses for thugs. I remember a Question Time edition when I first came across her; I thought she was some kind of comedy act, a la Borat or Lily Savage, only this time satirising the 'they just need a big hug' types.

It is par for the course that she has been embraced by David Cameron. (Every time Mr C opens his mouth and comes out with another piece of tree-hugging the chance of my voting Conservative gets smaller, but that's another story.) This quote from Miss Batmanghelidjh which Peter Hitchens has unearthed, however, takes the biscuit for la-la land nonsense:

There are very exciting studies emerging that may really help our thinking. A lot of these types of very violent young people are thermostatically impaired. The reason they're thermostatically impaired is that they've been exposed to so much violence and trauma that they almost get addicted to operating through adrenaline.

'This adrenaline recharges their system into a violent state of being. In addition they have got very poor selfsoothing repertoires because they have been deprived of loving care. Loving care and compassion is what gives you your repertoire for empathy.

'On the one hand they are maternally and carewise very depressed so that the control areas of the brain don't develop, and on the other hand they are supercharged with traumatic memories which disregulate their management of energy. And I think we need to be looking at the problem at these levels. Cultural factors only give you the weapons, they don't give you the feeling to kill.

I'm lost for words. Really.

(4)

This piece of mine appears in today's Times:

Next time I meet a criminal, I will be careful how I address him. I will bow before I open my mouth. I will preface my remarks with “Sir, I am honoured to be in your presence”. And then I will treat him with deference. Because I wouldn’t want to offend any of the upstanding members of society who reside at Her Majesty’s pleasure by not according them sufficient respect.

According to the latest report from Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, only 43 per cent of prisoners feel that prison officers treat them with respect. Worse still, Ms Owers finds that “institutional disrespect” of prisoners is built into the very fabric of Pentonville Prison.

The poor dears. How could anyone be so inhuman as not to respect murderers, rapists, paedophiles, thugs and thieves?

Even worse, Ms Owers informs us, inmates at Pentonville sometimes go without pillows or — surely tantamount to torture — a choice of dishes for dinner.

The airwaves yesterday were full of professional lobbyists for criminals — Frances Crook, from the Howard League for Penal Reform, and Juliet Lyon, from the Prison Reform Trust — telling us how terrible this all is and how we must treat prisoners better.

Well pardon me, but I don’t give a damn. I couldn’t care less if a convict has to sleep without a pillow or has to eat cheese on toast rather than fillet steak. In fact, the only thing I care about is that some apparently do get a choice of meal. They are, might I point out, criminals. They are — or rather should be — being punished. They should be given a basic meal and told to like it or lump it.

Ms Owers says that 40 per cent of prisoners allege that they are victimised by officers and she reports their allegations of assaults. These figures have been seized on as a horrifying statement of abuse by prison officers.

But there is a small problem with the reliability of this evidence. The people making the allegations are what are technically known as “liars”. They are criminals, for whom the truth is an alien concept. So when 40 per cent say they have been assaulted, I don’t believe them. And the fact that Ms Owers does surely says all that we need to know about the worth of her reports.

If criminals don’t want to live in harsh conditions there’s a very simple answer. Don’t commit a crime.

(2)

Is there a more annoying woman in the country than Frances Crook?

(5)

The post below prompts a thought. Use the comments section to say who - groups rather than individuals - you would like so see in the stocks. They don't need to be criminals. Not in the legal sense, anyway!

I'll start: middle class drug takers. Their stocks should be placed outside the crack houses which their habits are inextricably bound up with.

(8)

This site - Prison Works - looks interesting. A straighforward and correct proposition is a good starting point.

On a related theme, one aspect of the debate which annoys me is the concentration on life meaning life. Of course it should. But concentration on that often detracts from the more important problem - that sentences for lesser offences should also mean what they say. Take Nassem Hamed, released after 16 weeks from a 15 month sentence. If penal policy is ever to do a large part of its job properly - punishing offenders and deterring others - sentences of all kinds should, in most circumstances, be served in full. Parole and licence should be the exception, not the rule.

As for alternatives for prisons, I think we should always be open minded. If an appropriate alternative can be used, fine. Which is why I think we need to come up with a modern day equivalent of the stocks. For many young thugs, the notion of 'respect' undelies their behaviour - that they somehow gain respect from their peers by behaving as yobs.

So what's needed is a punishment which is designed to show them disrespect - to humiliate them in public. I can't think of anything more suitable in that respect than the stocks. With, perhaps, the public being allowed to throw rotten fruit and vegetables at them.

I know, of course, there's not a cat in hell's chance of that happening - 'human rights' and 'health and safety' would see to that - but if you think I'm not 100 per cent serious about the utility and appropriateness of such a punishment, you're wrong.

(via Iain Dale)

Sharia law in action.

I've always been under the impression that United States was the world’s freest society, with an unparalleled record for defending freedom around the world, with a finely developed legal system, constitutional protections that put most other democracies to shame and a law enforcement policy that has seen crime rates plunge.

What an idiot! To read the reaction to the extradition of the NatWest Three, it seems that the US is a hell-hole, with a justice system akin to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and with a penchant for seizing random people from around the world and imprisoning them on a whim. Even more shamefully, they don’t just take terror suspects but nice middle-class professional Brits with families.

I have no idea if the Nat West Three are fraudsters or entirely innocent. None of us does. Certainly not Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Attorney General, who has written to his counterpart to demand that he halt the three men’s extradition.

The US authorities, however, think that they are guilty of a massive fraud that is directly linked to the collapse of Enron — and so they want to try them. Not to sentence them peremptorily, not to hang them, not to lock them up without trial for 30 years, but . . . to put them on trial.

And, er, that’s it. That’s the huge injustice that they are facing. A trial, where the evidence will be weighed, and a jury will decide. When a trial takes place here we call it justice. When it takes place in the US we call it an outrage.

The British authorities don’t want to try them, the cry has gone out, so they should be left alone. Well, maybe, just maybe, that’s because the US is far tougher on white-collar crime than we are.

But they’ll await trial alongside murderers and rapists! Indeed. That’s what happens when you’re locked up. It’s not meant to be pleasant.

Most stupidly of all, we are told that we shouldn’t extradite them to the US because they didn’t extradite IRA suspects to us. Genius. Explain, please, how the best response is allowing other indicted defendants to escape trial, too?

None of the fuss has anything to do with justice. It’s merely the latest manifestation of the British establishment’s default mode: sneering superiority towards those awful hick Americans. And it’s as nauseating as usual.

(15)

I've just caught up with Tony Blair's 'summary justice' speech yesterday:

Without summary powers to attack ASB - ASBO's, FPN's, dispersal and closure orders on crack houses, seizing drug dealers assets - it won't be beaten.

...it is the culture of political and legal decision-making that has to change, to take account of the way the world has changed. It is not this or that judicial decision; this or that law.

It is a complete change of mindset, an avowed, articulated determination to make protection of the law-abiding public the priority and to measure that not by the theory of the textbook but by the reality of the street and community in which real people live real lives.

Blimey. Populist doesn't even come close. The PM can only have in mind one thing. Sir Ian Blair, you really are toast. Because...

Step forward the man Blair knows we want to see take over:

[My brain really has gone to mush, when I don't even spot that a huge poster has spelt Judge Dredd wrongly. My excuse is I've been on some pills which effectively knocked me out for 2 days, and I'm only now over the effects.]

(9)

Yesterday was just an average Sunday for the Home Office. A chief immigration officer was exposed for propositioning an asylum seeker for sex. Thousands of entirely innocent men and women were discovered to have been listed as having criminal records. And 230 suspected foreign terrorists were revealed to have been allowed to stay in Britain as asylum seekers on full state benefits.

Another day, another set of Home Office scandals.

In the past month, we have also discovered that foreign criminals have been released to wander the streets; that the official in charge of illegal immigration hasn’t got “the faintest idea” how many there are here; and that illegal immigrants have been working in the Home Office itself.

So frequent are the revelations of Home Office chaos – chaos endangers every one of us – that something seems almost wrong when we wake up in the morning and do not learn of another scandal.

And it’s not just incompetence. Even when ministers own up to the latest mess, they rarely give the full story.

Take the new Home Secretary, Dr John Reid. His start has hardly been propitious. Confronted last week by the news that illegal immigrants had been working in his own department, he did what has become Labour ministers’ stock in trade: he dissembled.

Dr Reid remarked dismissively that their arrest showed that the Immigration and Nationality Directorate was doing its job properly.

It actually showed the opposite. The cleaners had been working there not for days, not for weeks, not even for months – but for years.

Freshly in post, Dr Reid, of course, cannot be blamed for the mess itself. Indeed, a bruiser with a brain could be exactly what the Home Office needs.

But the likelihood is that, even if Dr Reid grasps the scale of the problem and determines to take action, he will fail.

The reason, as I saw with my own eyes when I spent time in the Home Office researching my biography of the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is that the Home Office is almost beyond repair.

There are two problems: one practical, one political.

The Home Office is a monster of a department, with responsibilities such as penal policy, counter-terrorism, the intelligence services, the police and anti-social behaviour, any one of which is more than enough for a department of its own. It is unmanageable.

I remember the pride with which David Blunkett directed me to a flow-chart which showed the Home Office’s new management structure, after he had cleaned out some of the dead wood, brought in new senior officials, and supposedly instituted new lines of responsibility and authority.

But however much of an improvement this might have been on what went before, the new structure still looked like a tangled mass of spaghetti.

The Home Office is simply too big, with too many responsibilities and too much paperwork for any one minister to master. It is no wonder that another previous Home Secretary told me that documents for which he had to take responsibility were wheeled into his office on a trolley, just so that he was able honestly to say that he had looked at them.

But the structure of the Home Office is not the worst of it. Much more damaging is the culture of the place. John Spellar, a former Labour minister, says that its staff resemble a group of 1960s sociology graduates. He is spot on. The Home Office culture puts the ‘rights’ of criminals above those of the public.

Awful as the record of recent Home Secretaries has been, it is not just Labour Home Secretaries who have presided over this The epitome of the limp, ineffectual, worse than useless criminals’ friend was Conservative grandee, Lord Hurd.

Michael Howard is the only successful Home Secretary in living memory because he refused to accept what he was told by his officials – that his job was to manage the growth in crime. He saw only one purpose to his job – reducing crime.

If Dr Reid is to match Mr Howard’s record, he has to do two things.

First, he must preside over the destruction of his department. No minister likes to think they cannot cope with running their department, but if Dr Reid was to implement a total restructuring of the Home Office's functions he would show his strength of purpose, not weakness.

But hand in hand with that, he must grapple with the culture. He must inculcate the idea that reducing crime is all that matters, and that victims – and potential victims – are the Home Office’s one true concern.

The grip of the 1960s sociologists is firm – not merely on the Home Office but on criminology. The chances of his succeeding are slim. But if crime is ever to be dealt with properly, it is a prerequisite that the Home Office as it exists today is destroyed.

(14)

Here's a typical story of how our so-called criminal justice system doesn't even come close to imposting justice on criminals:

A WIDOW who was repeatedly raped and beaten during a “pitiless” attack by two teenage burglars spoke yesterday of her determination to rebuild her life.

The woman, aged 65, was alone at home when the 19-year-old men — high on alcohol and drugs — forced a window and embarked on a frenzied attack. Armed with a knife and screwdriver, they bound and gagged their victim, forced her on to a bed and raped her several times.

She was “crippled with terror” and suffered “horrendous” blows to the face before her young attackers fled with jewellery, cash and a mobile phone.

...Judge Peter Fox, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, told them that their actions ranked “among the worst cases ever committed on Teesside”.

The two were each jailed for 'life'. Not of course that life means anything of the sort. Have a guess what the judge recommended as a minimum sentence these two animals should serve. 20 years? Thirty?

They were told that they would serve a minimum of six years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

Keep their traps shut, behave themselves and look remorseful, and they can look forward to being out in 2190 days.

Until life really starts meaning life for monsters such as Humphrey and Beazley, justice will remain a sick joke.

(9)

Alice Miles has an excellent piece on one of the government's worst and most under-reported gimmicks, the "victim’s advocate".

As she points out:

It really serves only the interests of the politician who wants to parade his “Something Being Done”.

...This experiment is going to be some spectacle: tragic and tragic-comic, fine fodder for the media — a great parade of misery, anger and confusion. What it will not be is justice; not for the guilty, nor for their victims and not for their relatives.

This has to be one of the most wretched gimmicks of all from this gimmick-obsessed government. The interests of victims are served best by one thing only: a criminal justice system which metes out justice to criminals.

(9)

Welcome to the wonderful world of British penal policy.

A ten year old is, in a mind bogglingly silly decision, prosecuted by the CPS for playground banter.

A judge points this out and is then - quelle surprise - lambasted by the usual suspects for speaking words with which no sensible person could disagree:

District Judge Jonathan Finestein said the decision to prosecute the youngster - accused of calling a fellow pupil a "Paki" and a "nigger" - was "political correctness gone mad".

He attacked the police for not "bothering" to prosecute more serious crime such as car theft but readily picking on a "silly" incident.

He added that he used to be called fat at school and said that in the old days the headmaster would have given the children "a good clouting" and sent them on their way.

...Judge Finestein said he thought prosecuting the youngster was "crazy" and urged the Crown Prosecution Service to reverse its decision. He said: "Have we really got to the stage where we are prosecuting 10-year-old boys because of political correctness? I was repeatedly called fat at school. Does this amount to a criminal offence?

"This is political correctness gone mad. It's crazy. Nobody is more against racist abuse than me but these are boys in a playground. This is nonsense."

He did not condone what was supposedly said but doubted the defendant understood bin Laden or al-Qa'eda and said there "must be other ways of dealing with this apart from criminal prosecution".

He added: "In the old days the headmaster would have given them a good clouting."

It was wrong for children to have racist views, he said, but he was "anxious to avoid the criminal conviction of somebody so young".

Addressing the boy's parents, he said: "I'm not blaming you, kids hear these things, but to refer to people as Pakis or refer to their race or religion is wrong."

He told the court: "This is how stupid the system is getting. There are major crimes out there and the police don't bother to prosecute. If you get your car stolen it doesn't matter, but you get two kids falling out because of racist comments - this is nonsense."

You'll struggle to find a word there defending the boy's right to use racist insults. You'll struggle, because the judge says nothing of the sort. What he points out is how OTT and inappropriate are the means by which the boy has been held to account for his words.

One Judith Elderkin, a member of the NUT National Executive (enough said) has condemned the judge for being "out of date" with the way issues are dealt with in schools today. He most certainly is - but the problem is not with the judge but with idiots such as Ms Elderkin, whose attitudes now prevail.

Indeed, the real point of this silly story is that this is the perfect example of our warped criminal justice policies. On the one hand, a ten year old is being dragged through the courts for playground banter. On the other hand, the Home Office has just instructed the police (via its new document, the Gravity Factor Matrix), to let off more law breakers with cautions if they commit any one of more than 60 types of crime, from assault to some types of theft, criminal damage and under-aged sex:

A handful of crimes are listed at level 1 and more than 60 at level 2, for which the sanction is “normally simple caution for a first offence” although the criminal may also receive a conditional caution or charge.

These crimes include possessing cannabis and throwing fireworks. They also cover criminal damage up to £500, theft up to £200, assault and sex with 13-15-year-olds (although there can be many aggravating factors, such as a wide age gap between victim and offender).

Apparently serious crimes can lead to a caution. For example, even when an assault results in a serious injury, the offender may escape a charge if he or she can argue that it was a spontaneous reaction rather than deliberate aggression.

So throw a firework or commit an assault on someone and you will get off with a caution. Call them a name, and you will be dragged through the courts, even as a ten year old.

This is the topsy turvy world we live in thanks to the ideological agenda of those who are attacking the judge.

Peter Briffa speaks for Britain.

It is not children who should be seen and not heard. It is the police. As Sir Ian Blair’s comments yesterday demonstrated, however, they are too often heard — just as they are rarely seen.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police entered the election campaign with his view that new legislation is needed to criminalise “acts preparatory to terrorism” and “very loose-knit conspiracies”, such as those around Kamel Bourgass and his acquitted associates. Sir Ian is not merely wrong — he has also come close to demonstrating that he is not up to his job.

The implication behind Sir Ian’s words is that, if the law had been stronger, Bourgass’s fellow defendants would now be in jail. Sir Ian appears to be unaware of the existence of the Terrorism Act 2000, which deals specifically with the “acts preparatory to terrorism” and “very loose-knit conspiracies”.

Take Section 57 (1): A person commits an offence if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism.

Note the words “preparation” and “instigation”. The legislation covers precisely the circumstances of Bourgass and his fellow defendants — when no act has yet been committed, but is being planned.

The police and security services are apparently still convinced that the defendants were preparing a major attack. That they were acquitted had nothing to do with the absence of appropriate legislation. The police claim that the jury was not allowed to hear much important evidence.

The idea that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police does not know the details of existing anti-terror legislation is worrying enough.

What is still worse is that he does not seem to understand the function of the police force. It is Parliament’s job to decide on the law, not the police’s. Sir Ian’s job is to enforce it — a job at which, as many victims of crime will attest, he has so far appeared clueless. He demonstrated his priorities with almost his first act as commissioner: to dig into his limited budget to change the typeface on his force’s motto, which “discriminated against short-sighted people”, to a simpler font.

Tough on italic fonts; ignorant of the law; happy to shoot his mouth off. It has hardly been an auspicious start to Sir Ian’s tenure.

£100,000.

Good to see Sir Ian Blair is getting his crime-fighting priorities right.

Dear me. Not exactly a promising start.

(15)

Brian Mickelthwait proposes a deal.

Count me in:

The politicos are cranking up this London Olympic bid. Well, all those of us who care more about people getting murdered than we do about people running marathons should offer the Olympiacs a deal. You can have your damned games if, by the time they come here, you have got on top of London's crime numbers. If, on the other hand, you obsess about the Olympics and regard harping on about murder as a mere distraction, then we should all flood the internet with "London: World Capital of Crime – Olympians Do Not Come Here – You Will All Be Murdered" propaganda. "London Welcomes The Olympians" – "Now Hand Over Your Wallet Or Die", etc.

(6)

Would you like to see more police on the beat? Or would you rather they spent more time filling out forms? Do you think the police should focus more on burglary than they do now? Do you think that petty crimes should be treated more seriously? Or perhaps you think that the police spend too much time chasing criminals and would be better employed on multicultural awareness courses.

Whatever you think, it doesn’t make the slightest difference. In our so-called democracy, the message of the authorities is simple: “Go to hell, little people. We don’t give a damn what you think.”

Last week, the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was appointed. According to most reports Sir Ian Blair is fully signed to up to one part of his namesake’s catchy formulation. He is tough on the causes of crime. Some say he has yet to be convinced of the first part: tough on crime. The fact is, however, that none of us knows what he really thinks. We have no idea if he thinks criminals are nasty people who should be punished or the pitiable victims of a materialistic society.

We have no idea because . . . well, why should we? It doesn’t make any difference what he thinks or what we think of what he thinks. We have no say in his appointment. All that matters is that he is rated by the great and the good. No matter if the rest of us think that the police need to get out of their panda cars and on to the beat, and that they should direct their attention to dealing with the social disorder which blights our streets.

But Sir Ian’s performance will be discussed by the Metropolitan Police Authority, so we shouldn’t worry. Phew.

Go to the front of the class if you can name one member of that authority. Award yourself an ice-cream if you name two.

Sir Ian might well be the best man for the job. But shouldn’t we have a say in the matter? Chief constables should be directly accountable to us, the people. It’s us they are supposed to serve, after all. Imagine the galvanising effect of a contest between two or three candidates for the job, each of whom published a manifesto to which we could then hold them. Some chance. One wouldn’t want to allow something as frightful as ordinary people having a say in law and order, would one?

(6)

Laban Tall has an excellent demoliton of a remarkably wrong-headed piece about prison by Johann Hari. Hari doesn't understand the most imortant truth of penal and criminal justice policy: prison works.

(8)

Superb piece by Alice Miles on the blather behind the legal and police reforms being undertaken by the government:

Of all the parts of the justice system that needed attention . . . the House of Lords? Not the vagueness of the crime statistics? Or that one needs to pay a solicitor as well as a barrister to go through a simple trial? Or the interminable rules governing the way the police deal with those under arrest? Or the inability to charge with dangerous driving a speeding hit-and-run driver who kills a child?

How much sexier to “abolish” the law lords and create a supreme court. So modern, so American, so . . . so like the law lords, actually. The 12 existing law lords are to be the 12 justices of the supreme court. They are to sit, still, in the House of Lords. And their replacements are to be chosen, not by a Cabinet minister — the Lord Chancellor — but by a Cabinet minister, the Constitutional Affairs Secretary. And this is progress? Pop a cherry on a stale cake and call it a gateau.

(5)

There are few things more ex than an ex-inspector. One day, ministers and the media hang on your every word; the next, you’re Sir David who?

The ex Chief Inspector of Prisons, that’s who. In an article published today, Sir David Ramsbotham writes that David Blunkett is “not fit” to be in charge of Britain's prisons. Why not? In large part because of the Home Secretary’s comments after the suicide of Harold Shipman: “You wake up and you receive a phone call telling you that Shipman has topped himself. And you think, is it too early to open a bottle? Then you discover that everybody's really upset that he's done it. So you have to be very cautious in this job, very careful.”

According to Sir David, “No one who rejoices - or says they understand why someone rejoices - at the death of someone for whose safety they are responsible, is fit to be responsible for the custody of any fellow human being.”

Really? What a strange world in which Sir David must live. I can’t imagine not rejoicing in the death of Myra Hindley or, when it comes, of Peter Sutcliffe, even if only momentarily. It’s a natural, human reaction to the snuffing out of evil. Are home secretaries not human, too? Can you honesty say that you did not, for a second, think the same about Shipman? And if you didn’t, I don’t think that’s because you’re saintly; I think it’s because you’re odd.

But that points to the most fundamental divide of all in criminal justice policy, between those who think that, at root, criminals should be pitied, and those who think that they should be punished. In the end, most of us come down on one side of that fence. Of course it’s more complicated than that but, like most generalisations, it has a basis of truth. And it’s in the ground between those two poles that the complications and misunderstandings start.

Take Mr Blunkett. The caricature view is that he’s the most ‘right wing’ Home Secretary since…well, since whom? Jack Straw? Or Michael Howard? The facts say something rather different. Rather than the ‘lock ’em up and throw away the key’ caricature, Mr Blunkett is engaged in a fascinating experiment to see whether it is indeed possible to be both tough and tender, and to be severe where necessary and lenient where permissible.

The typical chattering class response when I tell people that I am writing Mr Blunkett’s biography is an asinine variation on that ‘right wing’ theme, followed by self-congratulatory guffaw at their having had so astonishingly original a thought. That there might be more to the policies emerging from the Home Office – that it might be possible to want retribution and rehabilitation, for example – doesn’t cross their mind. In part, that’s because of the Home Secretary’s remarkable ability to say what people outside Islington think. To most people, pointing out that immigrants are better off if they can speak English is sheer common sense. To others, it’s racist. Again, admitting that you felt a surge of joy on hearing that Shipman had ‘topped himself’ is part of that same phenomenon: to most people, murderers – especially the likes of Dr Shipman – are, to put it bluntly, scum. To others, they are as worthy of respect as any human being.

That divide was typified by the remarks of Sir Oliver Popplewell on his retirement from the bench last year. Talking on the Today programme about Mr Blunkett’s plans for “life to mean life”, he accused the Home Secretary of “populism”. As Mr Blunkett responded: “I don’t think listening to the people that…I represent is populism. I think it is decent common-sense in a democracy that works.” Indeed, those sentencing guidelines are a perfect demonstration of the ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ approach which Mr Blunkett has adopted. Anyone who abducts and murders a child will never be released from prison. Whole life terms will also be imposed for terrorist murder or multiple murders which are premeditated, sexual or sadistic. As he has put it: "Murder is the most serious and heinous of crimes…When capital punishment was abolished, it was intended that a strong, rigorous alternative needed to be introduced and strictly maintained. I am determined to ensure we have modern arrangements which maintain that commitment.”

But the other side of the picture, which tends to reported only to be castigated, is the belief that where prison is not necessary, community punishments are most appropriate. Here, Mr Blunkett has vastly increased the range of options, such as tagging and the current tabloid obsession, ‘intermittent sentences’, where a convict is allowed home at weekends or for some specific, regular purpose. American experience shows that these can help protect family relationships which can otherwise fracture, often at the expense of children who end up suffering the most. Does that mean the Home Secretary is another lily-livered liberal? No more than ensuring that ‘life must mean life’ is populist, or a sign of being viciously right wing. They are both part of a mixed approach which is, it seems, too nuanced for many critics to grasp.

But then life is so much easier when we imagine that people conform to a stereotype. Sir David, after all, is a retired General; he too is hardly the wet of the stereotypical prison reformer. Can’t we just accept that both he and Mr Blunkett are more complicated than their caricatures?

(13)

I have a question for Tony Blair, for Jack Straw, and for anyone else who says that they oppose the death penalty for murderers such as Ian Huntley but are, nonetheless, prepared to see Saddam hang. It’s a very simple question, made up of just three letters.

Why?

All my adult life I have opposed the death penalty. My reasons are pretty standard; shared, I’m sure, by the vast majority of those who oppose capital punishment. Of all of them, one stands out: better that ninety nine guilty men should go free than that one innocent man should be killed.

That is, of course, a practical rather than a moral objection, but I have also had a principled objection to the idea of the state taking a life when it sees fit. War, certainly, presents a different circumstance, when there is no simply no choice but for the state to kill in order to survive. But it is impossible to imagine how, in response to criminal behaviour, life imprisonment rather than execution would put at risk a country’s very existence.

So if last week had been a normal week, my reaction to the conviction of Ian Huntley would have been that he should be locked up for ever – that, as David Blunkett is now attempting to ensure, “life means life”. And I would have had very little concern for the conditions in which he was kept – other, that is, than that they should not be comfortable.

But it was not a normal week. By the end of it, I had come to realise that I can see no reason, either moral or practical, why Ian Huntley should not be executed – or why other murderers, too, should not be killed.

Saddam’s capture leads to no other conclusion. It is one thing to argue that taking life is always immoral. Such an absolutist view may be wrong headed – self defence, by both states and individuals, is the most obvious refutation - but those who argue that Saddam should be punished not through execution but by life imprisonment have at least the virtue of intellectual consistency.

Those, however, such as the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, who say that they oppose the death penalty – indeed, as Mr Straw put it on Monday, that they continue to “campaign hard to try and extend the abolition of the death penalty” – but that in this instance they are prepared to acquiesce in what they must consider to be state-sponsored, judicial murder have no such virtue. Their position is incoherent, unprincipled, and plain wrong. If they believe that it is wrong for the state to punish murderers by execution – a perfectly valid position - then it is, well, wrong. It’s not wrong in Britain but right in Iraq or wrong in California but right in Texas.

They explain their position – that it is OK to hang Saddam, but not OK to hang Huntley - with a decidedly specious argument. According to Mr Blair, “it is for them [the Iraqis] to determine what penalties there may be”. Aha! Now we’re getting to the nub of the issue: Iraqis are barbarians of whom we can expect no better – a view which has been implicit in the comments of those who say that Saddam must be tried by an international, rather than Iraqi, court. Such a stance, which seems at first instance to be respectful of Iraqi feelings, turns out on further examination to be deeply patronising.

Either capital punishment is immoral or it isn’t. By refusing to condemn any potential execution of Saddam, Messrs Blair and Straw and the others who have fallen into line behind them are, from their perspective on capital punishment, supporting a grotesquely immoral act.

They are also exposing the deep flaws in their opposition to the death penalty at home. If it is wrong to execute Ian Huntley, it is wrong to execute Saddam. But that works in reverse, too. If, as the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary appear to believe, it is morally acceptable to kill Saddam, how can it be any less so to kill Ian Huntley? It is a perverted moral calculus which holds that murdering two children is somehow more acceptable than murdering three hundred thousand.

I have never been an absolutist in my opposition to ending human life. Since I accept that there are times when it is right to kill, I have this week had to ask myself an unsettling question: when could there be a clearer cut example of living, breathing evil, and when could the extermination of that evil be more justified? As I watched the wonderful pictures of Saddam’s humiliation, I could not – nor can I still – think of a single reason why he should not be executed. I am left with only one response, which is that Saddam should indeed be put to death – after due process.

And, much as I have tried to escape this conclusion, I cannot: there are no sensible grounds on which one can argue that it is morally right to execute Saddam but not Ian Huntley. Anyone who accepts that Saddam should be killed must also accept the case for capital punishment more generally. We can argue about details – to which forms of murder it should apply, and in what circumstances – but the principle is clear. Accept the moral validity of executing Saddam and you must accept it for executing Huntley – and, indeed, for other cold blooded and deliberate murderers.

The imprisonment of Saddam has made me realise that, far from opposing the death penalty, I can see no moral alternative to it.

As for the idea that it is better that ninety nine guilty men go free than one innocent man dies, the response of one Chinese jurist to that statement is perhaps the most pertinent observation: “Better for whom?”.

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I have never come across Ruth Henig before. Dr Henig, should you too have been as ignorant as I of her existence, is ‘chair’ of the Association of Police Authorities. Given their purpose – essentially providing a form of democratic input into the running of police forces – you might perhaps have expected to have heard of her, since she is effectively our numero uno chief representative to the police.

Then again, perhaps not. If Dr Henig’s reaction to David Blunkett’s proposals yesterday to give the public a greater say in local policing (via the direct election of police authority members) is anything to go by, the last thing she wants is to have to dirty her hands dealing with the likes of us, the public: “The issue for me is 'would directly electing police authority members be the key to enhancing local accountability?' I don't think it would. The sort of areas we are involved in, such as financial management, performance management, the use of resources; these are not really very sexy issues for election campaigns.”

Indeed not. Should we want to exercise some influence over the way in which our streets our policed, we should leave it to Dr Henig and her friends. We wouldn’t want to cramp their style with the sort of vulgar ideas which – hold your nose as you read the next three words – the general public might favour. Dr Henig appears to believe that North Korea is too democratic. Kim Jong-Il, after all, does at least go through a charade of an election.

Existing police authorities are as Dr Henig likes it: appointed, rather than elected. And guess what. According to Home Office research, few of us have a clue who they are or what they are for. So Mr Blunkett’s proposals are certainly a step forward.

But they are far too limited. As with council elections, which rarely manage to get more than thirty per cent of us to turn up at the polling booth, a derisory turn out is almost guaranteed.

And there is a more fundamental problem: those who will be attracted to stand. Let me make a prediction: the only change that will happen is that the current third rate time-servers will, instead of being appointed, be able to claim a democratic mandate, based on a turn out in the low twenties. And a fat lot of use that is to anyone.

If the Home Secretary was looking for genuine accountability, which would force the police to respond to the demands of the public, he would make a fundamental change to the criminal justice system. He would look to the United States, and their system of District Attorneys, and – working with the Lord Chancellor’s Department - reform the Crown Prosecution Service into a series of local branches, each of which would be responsible for prosecutions in their own area. And, critically, the head of each local CPS would be directly elected.

Not only would that, at a stoke, inject a hitherto alien concept – the public will – into the very heart of the system, it would also energise local democracy.

And that, of course, is precisely why such a change would be resisted tooth and nail by the police, local authorities and the CPS. None of them want their existing apple cart upset, least of all by those uncouth beasts who comprise the electorate. Adding a few elected members to police authorities is bad enough; an elected, local District Attorney would be unpalatable. Just look at their reaction to Ray Mallon, when he stood for the mayoralty of Middlesbrough. Mallon ran as a de facto local DA, and was derided by all the local powers that be. He won with sixty three per cent of the vote.

It’s become almost a cliché to point out how today’s police priorities barely begin to match those of the public. But for all the times it’s repeated, it has almost no impact on chief constables’ behaviour. What’s needed is the direct voice of the people: an elected DA who has the power to do more than merely urge, and can set about changing police priorities from motorists who drive at 32 mph in a 30 mph zone to the criminals the public wants dealt with. By prosecuting – relentlessly - teenage thugs, beggars and other low life who destroy the social fabric, and not just letting them off with slapped wrists, local DAs can change the culture. Unless, of course, the public decides to elect DAs who promise to make speeding motorists their priority. It will be our choice.

That prompts a thought: how about electing local Chief Constables? Now that really would be something.

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Fascinating idea by David Carr:

Could there be such a thing a 'Legal Laffer Curve'? What I mean is, a point where there are so many laws that the State cannot possibly enforce them and their agents start to wilt under the pressure of trying to do so. From then on the whole thing starts to go downhill and the lawlessness begins to grow uncontrollably.

Has that point been reached?

A chief Constable admitted yesterday that his officers are being forced to ignore thousands of burglaries, thefts and car crimes because they are swamped by increasing drug and gun violence.

The public's perception that the police were not interested in low-level and non-violent crime was underlined when Steve Green, Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire police, said there was not enough money or officers available to investigate all crime.

The emergence of Britain's drug and gun culture had impacted on his force to such an extent that "something had to give".

A very telling admission from a man who is clearly under pressure. However my sympathy-meter is stuck at nought. The police have spent decades campaigning vigourously to abolish just about every right of the citizens to preserve their own security and, of course, the means to do so. The natural consequence is that they have arrogated that burden onto themselves and it is a burden the can neither cope with nor discharge. Truly that is a zero-sum game.

Yes, I think something will have to 'give' but knowing this country as I do, I doubt very much that it will be the pathology of total control that has caused the problem in the first place.

This is one to think about...

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The Sun's unique take on Red Kennedy is not entirely complete.

According to Simon Hughes, prison is a "cushy option", which should be replaced for "tens of thousands of burglars, shoplifters and petty drug offenders" with working in the community.

"We have to have a change in culture that says prison is the tough option and community service the easy one. In fact, prison is a very easy life in many ways for lots of people. They're watered, kept warm, in all-expenses paid accommodation with three meals a day, a gym, pool table and a telly. It's actually a cushy number."

The Guardian continued thus: "Mr Hughes stressed that the system was not for violent or sex offenders or for residential burglars if they committed their offences while their victims were present."

Let's, for the sake of argument, accept Mr Hughes' proposition (although I'd be willing to wager a small fortune - I don't have a bigger one - that if you asked 100 criminals if they'd rather go in the slammer or work in the community, 100 of them would opt for the latter). If he's right and prison is the "very easy life" (as opposed to community work), his policy is the wrong way round. It shouldn't be "burglars, shoplifters and petty drug offenders" who spend their time cleaning graffiti; it should be the very worst offenders - rapists and murderers. They're the ones, after all, who now have the "very easy life" in prison. They should be the ones to have the really tough punishments.

There you have it: Lib Dem penal policy. Barking. Even on its own terms.

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