Saturday, August 25, 2007 

More reasons to love Jeremy Paxman.

Earlier in the year we were treated to a semi-coherent rant by the Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre in the form of the Cudlipp lecture, where he attacked the "subsidariat", i.e. the Guardian, Independent, Times and BBC for their various crimes, mainly not being right-wing enough and as a result treating the general public who as we know are naturally conservative with contempt. It's worth comparing his abortion with yesterday's excellent MacTaggart lecture by Jeremy Paxman, where he effortlessly identified the real problems with the current state of the fourth estate.

Taking his cue in part from Tony Blair's own valedictory speech on the state of the media, Paxman rightly notes that despite the amount of hypocrisy involved in Blair's comments and his laughable example of the Independent, his message was partly right but delivered by the wrong person.

The basic charge sheet against us from Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell is as follows. Firstly, that we behave like a herd. Secondly that we have a trivial and collective judgement. Thirdly, that we prefer sensation to understanding. I’m sorry to say, but I think there’s something in all of these arguments.

You only have to see re-examine the coverage of Rhy Jones' tragic death over the last few days to see just how the herd operates. It's been almost an exact mirror of when Madeleine McCann went missing - the news media has decamped to Liverpool, the newspapers have offered rewards for information, we've had the same intrusion into the parents' private grief, and we've had interviews with any teenager who so much as looks like he might be in a gang, none of which have told us anything to new.

Take the Guardian's interview this morning with a "Nogadog", a disgusting litany of boasts, bravado and shallow willy-waving that tells us absolutely nothing that we didn't already know about gang culture, but it sure makes for good copy and introduces the general public to local slang for the police. That the little prick behind the interview is now probably a hero along his friends for getting into the posh Grauniad with his senseless, immature mumblings despite being too afraid to show his face like the frightened shit he is ought to have told the journalist that this was gutter journalism rather than investigative reporting and getting the story behind the story. Did the television and newspaper photographers also have to film and snap Jones' parents looking at the tributes to their son, showing his mother crying again, even after they'd given an emotional press conference? It was tawdry voyeurism of the worst kind, emotional pornography that intruded on their private grief. That some of the tabloids (and indeed, the Telegraph) put it on their front page ought to tell us how much they really care: and does the Mirror's front page happen to remind anyone of one of the Sun's early efforts to "empathise" with Kate McCann?


It's perhaps fitting that Gerry McCann himself has now criticised some of the coverage of his daughter's disappearance. Some will rightly suggest that it takes some chutzpah on his behalf to condemn the "bombard(ing) [of] people on a daily basis" with Madeleine's image after that was what his wife and he set out to do in the first few weeks, but the continuing of just that has become truly revolting, with the Daily Express making up stories every day now for weeks because it's decided its a circulation booster. This is the very worst of the media's behaviour, acting both like a herd and preferring sensation to absolutely any understanding. Every reported act must be met with a reaction - Jones' death demands zero tolerance; Madeleine's disappearance has to lead to more co-operation Europe wide on paedophiles; immigration figures are not anaylsed for exactly what they mean, but are distorted, used as a political football and then by single-interest groups to prove how right they are (see Five Chinese Crackers all this week); and the decision not to deport Learco Chindamo must result in the ripping up of the Human Rights Act - and all of this in just one week, in the supposed silly season. When it's not pure sensationalism, we instead get irresponsible fearmongering: just look at the Sun's idiotic, designed to cause panic coverage of the floods, claiming there were going to be mass outbreaks of water borne diseases and that yobs were going round pissing in and smashing up bowsers, which the BBC, the Sun's natural enemy had to correct.

Paxman rightly points out just how money, ratings and the digital age have all had a hand to play in both the scandals concerning the faking of competitions, the defrauding of the vulnerable who enter premium-rate phone line quizzes, and the gradual drop in trust all round. Big Brother is but the biggest example - a witless, unethical exploitation both of those who involve themselves in it and those who itch to vote the contestants out, but which Channel 4 relies on as its banker. You could argue that Big Brother pays for Channel 4 News, Dispatches, Peep Show etc, but why should a channel providing a public service have to stoop so low in order to also bring the "highbrow"? Shouldn't we be outraged that Newsnight, an institution that usually gets less than a million viewers that if were to disappear would leave a gaping hole in political coverage on television, is getting even further cutback while programmes that are an insult to viewers' intelligence like "GrownUps", "Tittybangbang" and "Little Miss Jocelyn" are still being produced and mass advertised? Why should we be surprised that people are turning off and losing faith when such dreck keeps getting renewed?

We need to treat our viewers with respect, to be frank with them about how and why programmes were made, to be transparent. We need, in short, to rediscover a sense of purpose.

This ought to be, to quote one of the most abused terms of the week, "common sense". That it isn't suggests how far the media has moved from being the supposed voice of the people to deciding that it knows what the people want - and how wrong it often is.

Slight update: Tory MP John Whittingdale and Panorama's John Sweeney have come up with the obvious solution to Newsnight's woes: close BBC Three. Considering about the only decent programme it's managed to produce in four years has been Monkey Dust, it ought to be a no brainer. The other reasonably popular dramas it's produced, such as Torchwood, Bodies, etc would be just at home on BBC Two as they are on the BBC's feeble attempt at a "yoof" channel.

Labels: , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

8/25/2007 08:32:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, August 24, 2007 

More thoughts on crime and why we don't need zero tolerance.

(This is mostly going to be a tedious post based around the premise that despite all the claims that zero tolerance has worked in New York and Los Angeles, the cities are in fact more dangerous than London is. If you don't want to read me ranting about overreactions to one heinous crime, skip it.)

Which side are you on? Is this what it comes down to? Must we be polarised between the Sun's call for the murder of Rhys Jones to "change us as a nation" and the Grauniad's that this is not a country "beset by universal violence or disorder, or even, in most parts of the country, by rising levels of criminality"? The answer, as usual, is somewhat in-between. It's incredibly easy to pick major holes in almost every Sun leader, as regular readers will know, so I'm not going to bother doing that today, although I will say that I at least agree with its sentiments on education, although it doesn't so much as mention poverty, both in terms of wealth and ambition, especially when these gangs see the alternative ways of earning respect as the way to make up for both. Community solidarity, which it does at least mention, although it doesn't look at the reasons why it's broken down, is also vital.

While most on the left side of the political fence will nod along with the lack of urgency and appeal for calm which emanates from the Guardian leader, the very last thing we should be is complacent. For too long Labour and much of the left has taken the poor for granted, regarding their votes as already earned and ignoring the very real problems which have emerged on the so-called "sink estates". Labour's answer, instead of really listening, both to those caught in the crossfire as it were and to both the victims and the perpetrators has been to dish out ASBOs and legislate, rather than examine why things are as they are, or in fact afraid to find out what they are. As Justin points out, for too long we've allowed idiots to rule the roost in some of these communities while everyone else has suffered in silence, either out of want of a quiet life or fear, when what's really needed is for them to be ridiculed as the little men they are. If this involves a certain amount of humiliation, so be it. At the same time, we should also recognise that some of the lower-level trouble is just a teenage stage, which in some children is a lot more serious than it is with others. Not every teenage occasional hooligan or "yob" turns into an adult with those same tendencies.

The key to tackling it though is in intervening early, in firm parenting rather than the blaming of everything and everyone else that some indulge in, and understanding the desperation that often underpins such an existence. In our little world of pseudo-individualism, where capitalism is the solution to everything, and we only need to send in the voluntary organisations and the entrepreneurs for all to be made right, we have to accept that the concept of wage slavery, which a lot of those involved in low-level yobbery will have the rest of their lives to look forward to is not much of a fairytale existence. There is no simple solution, but the much mocked SureStart centres deserve both more funding and more time to make a difference, local government and accountability have to be strengthened, and most of all, we shouldn't knee-jerk into yet another punitive, draconian crackdown.

Which, naturally, is just what the Sun is saying must happen. Like two days again when David Cameron brought up New York, the paper is calling for zero tolerance, like that introduced by the police chief Bill Bratton in that city and now in Los Angeles. He's even talked to the paper saying that it's exactly what's needed here.

There are a number of problems with this. Firstly, Bratton's experiment has not just involved pumping in police and implementing ridiculously harsh punishments in some cases, but also the COMPSTAT system, used to break down where crime has occurred over the past week so that task forces, more patrols and further measures can be brought into those areas. This is all very well for a city force, but to do it across a whole country, especially when a decent amount of areas of it have no such problems and crime is something the residents read about in the paper, is not just untested, it's the old cliche of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Secondly, we have to examine the actual figures to see just how safe Los Angeles and New York are. It's impossible to compare either to England and Wales entirely due to the vast difference in overall population, but we can reasonably well apply the crime levels in both to that in London. The Sun produces a load of figures showing how crime has dropped in both under Bratton's watch, but by just how much in comparison to our own major city?

On the face of it, the LA figures (PDF) do indeed look good. In all areas, apart from homicide, where LA had 481 last year and London (PDF) had 165, it looks as if LA has less rapes, less robbery and much fewer burglaries. The only problem with all that is that LA, according to the COMPSTAT weekly figures (PDF), has a population of just over 4 million. London, however, has a metropolitan population of between 12 and 14 million, which means we're going to have to multiply the LA figures by three to make them applicable. LA then has just under 600 more rapes than in London, 2,709 to 2,094, robberies are around the same with 42,975 in LA to 43,971 London, burglaries similarly go to 60,060 in LA to 59,285 in London. LA counts theft from vehicles and vehicle theft separately, so when added together and multiplied by 3 hits 163,494 compared to London's vehicle crime figure of 125,234.

New York, with a population of around 19 million, is more broadly comparable with London's, so I'm just going to do them side by side, but if you're anal enough you can ratchet the London figures up accordingly. New York had 874 murders in 2005; London had 165 last year. Rapes in NY were at 3,636, London at 2,094, NY experienced 35,179 robberies, while London had 43,971, and NY had 68,034 burglaries whilst London had 59,285. There are no instantly comparable figures on aggravated assaults, but for comparisons sake lists 46,150, while London records 4,810 instances of grievous bodily harm.

Does this actually tell us anything? Well, when it comes down to what most occupies the media, the murders and rape, both New York and Los Angeles are on this data far more dangerous places to live. Indeed, both have more murders than England and Wales have as a whole (There were 765 in 2005, including the 52 victims of 7/7). On the other instances of more minor crime, the figures are broadly comparable. While New York and Los Angeles have had zero tolerance, the numbers in London have been falling without any such heavy-handed intervention.

This isn't to deny that it's possible that zero tolerance here could bring crime down further than it already is. Both the BCS and the police figures have shown a major drop in most crime, with the chances of being a victim the lowest for a generation. They've also broadly either stayed static or dropped for the past 10 years. Whether you want to link this to New Labour's crackdown is up to you. What it doesn't show however is that there is a major need for the zero tolerance approach. If we were to go down that road, it would require a major step change in our current thinking on the criminal justice system. More prisons would need to be built, we would have to accept much harsher sentences for what we now regard as "minor" crime, and we would also have to reconsider the role of rehabilitation as a whole. The reality is that we should be making policy on what works, not on what's either liberal or punitive respectably, and if there's one thing we do know, it's that prison doesn't work. The time for zero tolerance has not yet come, if it ever will.

Labels: , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

8/24/2007 07:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, August 23, 2007 

Tory hell and failing to understand youth crime.

Whichever way you look at it, the Conservatives are having hell of a week. Dear old Dave returns from holiday on Monday, finds himself 10 points behind the polls, a Labour lead not seen since prior to the Iraq war, and quite understandably, panics. Cue a quick re-emphasis on one of the few areas where the Tories, much to the chagrin of Labour, had made some headway on: the NHS. Promising a "bare knuckle fight" over hospital closures, the Tories launch a list of what they claim is either going to be shut down, or at least reconstituted in some way. They might have expected that some of the hospital trusts would reply that their claims were nonsense; they didn't expect that one of their own MPs would, who was quickly brought in for some Cameroonian re-education in not making the leader look like an idiot.

Clearly thinking they were on to far more of a winner with the tabloid outrage over Chindamo's successful appeal against deportation, Team Cameron comes out and blames the Human Rights Act, demands that it be repealed and that common sense must prevail, hence we must have a "British" Bill or Rights. 24 hours later they have egg on their face again, as it turns out it was an EU directive and not the "hated" act itself which was to blame, but Cameron goes on demanding it must go nevertheless, despite numerous bloggers pointing out the HRA is as much a legacy of the Conservative party and Britain as it is anything to do with Europe, let alone the EU.

Finally then, Cameron makes a speech on the other pressing issue of the week, youth crime, yob culture, anti-social behaviour, whatever you want to call it. It's a little known fact that New Labour invented anti-social behaviour: before Blair came to power and started warbling on about it, little attention had been paid towards it. All that changed as the media latched onto the idea, and soon those unlucky enough to be young, dumb and bored while standing around on street corners became the enemy within. All this remember against a background where the chance of becoming a victim of crime is at the lowest point in a generation, when attacks involving knives peaked in 1995, but where the fear of it rather than the actuality has become ever present. Along with the fear of terrorism, Labour used this as a potent weapon to trim civil liberties down to size, introducing ASBOs, creating 3,000 new criminal offences, and filling the prisons to breaking point.

How then does the Tory party possibly react to some of the most draconian crime and punishment policies seen in decades? First, Cameron attempted to "hug a hoodie", as his speech on showing children more love will forever more be known. While it certainly had some merits, everyone just remembers the soundbite and not what he actually said. This time round it would all be different.

And so it proved. The motto of the day was "common sense", a phrase he used 3 times during the speech. Common sense, unfortunately, is subjective: according to Cameron, it's common sense to hit teenagers where it hurts, which doesn't mean that you punch hormonal youngsters in the region of their developing sexual organs, but that you give courts the power to delay them obtaining a driver's license. His examples for this perhaps weren't the best he could have come up with, as he suggested that a youngster caught buying alcohol twice could have it delayed, which seems like a recipe for embittering and further alienating those caught. In any case, most of the evidence suggests that few 15-year-olds are buying drink, rather getting others to buy it or stealing it from their parents. How many of those most likely to be the source of anti-social behaviour are even in a position to learn to drive and have a vehicle once they turn 17? Learning to drive and getting a car young tends to be a middle-class pursuit, especially due to the costs involved.

Cameron's other main criminal justice proposal was to give magistrates greater power over sentencing, extending the length they can hand down to 12 months, as well as scrapping the early release scheme. Tabloid pleasing gestures, but ones that will put further pressure on the prison system which is already bursting at the seams. The early release scheme has actually done nothing to bring down the population, with it hitting 80,000 again, and scrapping it would only make things worse. Cameron doesn't say whether he's going to build more prisons, but to keep his promise he would have to.

Not that little things like that get in the way of Cameron's rhetoric. He says that violent crime has doubled over the last ten years: the British Crime Survey (PDF) says it has fallen over 41% since 1995, and that 49% of violent incidents reported to the survey do not involve any injury, while the police figures over the year showed no statistical difference. He quotes the Centre for Crime and Justice Study figures on knife crime which the Home Office disputed, and which the centre itself still hasn't put online (nor have they replied to my email) (Update: Richard Garside writes to the Grauniad saying the review is based on the best information the HO has available and that the report will be released next month). He mentions New York as an example of how crime can be tackled, through zero tolerance: when the Sun raised that earlier in the year, I pointed out New York is in fact more dangerous than the whole of Britain combined:

A quick look at the crime statistics, especially the number of murders, shows there were 889 in New York in 2004. By comparison, London had 221. Even taking into account the population difference, with New York having 19 million and London having around 13 million, that's a huge difference. The 889 figure is in fact higher than the number for the whole of Britain in 2004 - the British Crime Survey reporting there were 820.

Much of Cameron's speech rests on familiar arguments, such as cutting down on police red-tape and paperwork and even on the statistic collecting mentioned by Peter Fahy: perhaps because the statistics tell the story that things aren't as bad as either the media or politicians are making out. This isn't to suggest that they're worthless suggestions, as sometimes the most common response does hold a well-known truth, but why should we expect the Tories would be any better than Labour at sorting it out?

Finally, he rounds on the social aspect, bringing up the old new proposals on tax benefits for getting married, designed to soak the middle classes, attacking single mums by saying it's work rather than benefits that's the best path, as if they didn't know, and lastly lauding all those independent organisations that are really making a difference. The Labour response? To accuse them of lurching to the right, which is just about as pot and kettle as you can get, then promoting and extending the ABC behaviour contracts program, which it has to be said is a better suggestion than increasing sentencing.

Unsurprisingly, there's little to no mention in any of this of the actual reasons behind either anti-social behaviour, youth crime, or even gang culture. We've forgotten the causes. Anyone who saw the feature on Newsnight on the "Niets", the 16-24 year-olds not in education, training or work saw the desperation, alienation, humiliation and pessimism that came from their helplessness as a result of their educational failures, family background and endemic poverty that had blighted their lives. They didn't want to be on benefits, they just didn't see any way off of them. Tackling this is just as important as deciding what the latest punishment has to be. Iain Duncan Smith came close to realising this in his report but relied upon the same old solutions which have failed before. It's come to something when it's a man in his 60s, Ming Campbell, who's come the closest to actually getting it.

Labels: , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

8/23/2007 09:34:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Scum-watch: First things first, smear the enemy.

Generally, when you think that you're on the moral high ground, you don't resort to cheap dirty tricks to further prove your point. When you're the Sun newspaper however, or indeed, any part of the Murdoch empire, the first not the last resort is to smear, slander and lie about today's common enemy.

Before the news came through of the shooting of Rhys Jones, the Sun's front page had a banner headline reading "KILLER'S VILE BOASTS". Even after the story has been confined to the inside pages, it still contains the same highly questionable content that's all too familiar of a hatchet job.

THE thug who murdered headmaster Philip Lawrence JOKED about the brutal stabbing, a man who served prison time with him revealed last night.

Learco Chindamo BOASTED of his wicked crime and swaggered around jail with a gang of fellow killers, handing out beatings to other cons.

Ex-thief Mark Brunger said: “He didn’t give a toss about killing Philip Lawrence, he used to laugh about it with everybody.”

Mark, 28, hit out after a tribunal blocked Chindamo’s deportation on his release — despite Home Office warnings that he is still a threat.

Oh, so this happened in prison did it? Err, no:

Mark, who met Chindamo at Swinfen Hall Young Offenders Institution in Lichfield, Staffs, said: “To say he is reformed is a joke.

“He is a violent, dangerous man. He would kill again.”


Just for a second, let's accept Brunger's account of events at face value. Swinfen Hall caters for young adult prisoners between the ages of 18 and 25. Seeing as Brunger is now 28 and Chindamo is 26, Chindamo's swaggering, boasts and beatings must have occurred between either 3 and 8 years ago. The Sun naturally doesn't mention when this actually took place - and the leader only refers to it occurring in the recent past. Without wishing to turn into an internet detective, a quick MurdochSpace (someone with a Facebook/Bebo account could do searches there if they so wished) search for Mark Brunger turns up just one entry in the UK, a 28-year-old currently living in Bristol. In his about me section:

UNDERSTAND OR WISH TO UNDERSTAND ITS PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!! IM FED UP OF BEING TOLD WHAT I CAN AND CANT DO BY A GOVERMENT WHO JUST WANT TO EARN MONEY OF MY BACK AND WOULD PIMP ME OUT TO THE HIGHEST BIDDER IF IT COULD GET AWAY WITH IT!?!?!?!?!?! BUT WATCH THIS SPACE CAUSE THEY ARE MORE THAN LIKELY TRYING TO WORK OUT A WAY TO DO IT AS WE SPEAK. STAND UP FOR OUR RIGHTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CACHU WIWAR............07794771713

Someone with more guts than me might want to ring that number and ask him whether he's one and the same as the Sun's source. He also has what seem to be a couple of Friends Reunited accounts, both of which list the same school as the MySpace page, one of which suggests he's just started a university degree in counselling.

Even if we decide that Brunger is telling the truth, we have the word of a fellow ex-prisoner, one who could be talking about an event up to 8 years ago, to put against the testimony not just of a deputy governor of Ford open prison, but also that of an unnamed female officer at the jail that had helped to prepare Chindamo for day release. According to today's Independent, the Home Office attempted to suppress their evidence which contradicted its own, only allowing them to submit it once the governor of Ford had himself intervened, and even then they weren't allowed to give their account of Chindamo's rehabilitation in person, where their arguments could have been cross-examined in detail. To quote from their panel's judgment:

"Of particular significance was what was said by Mr Hughes, the deputy governor of Ford Prison, in his letter to the appellant's solicitors of 8 March 2007. He had been in the Prison Service for 30 years and had dealt with numerous offences. There were only a small minority who had demonstrated a change for the better and gone on to lead lawful and purposeful lives and he strongly believed that the appellant was a changed person who had realised the gravity of his index offence and if given a chance would prove himself worthy of trust. All the reports on him had been very positive and the parole board had been very impressed."

It's little wonder then that the Sun has set out to do everything in its power to try and prove that Chindamo is still a brutal, evil thug, especially when his ruling means it can further attack both the EU and the "hated" human rights act. Taking its cue directly from Mark Brunger's helpful intervention:

Forever evil

LEARCO Chindamo should not be deported. But only because he should not be released.

The idea that the savage, cold-blooded killer of headmaster Philip Lawrence is a reformed character is a joke.


A joke to a newspaper that doesn't believe in forgiveness, it's true. Not however to prison staff themselves, who are not very often bleeding heart liberals.

We now learn that this “model prisoner” swaggered around in jail boasting of his appalling crime while leading a ruthless gang of other young killers who ruled E-wing through violence.

This was in the recent past. And the Home Office still considers him “a genuine and present risk” to us.


Quite true, but the Asylum and Immigration Panel rejected that conclusion, and the Home Office's argument was purely on the basis that the press coverage of his release might make him difficult to settle in a particular part of the country. The Scum has been more than happy to make that observation a self-fulfilling prophecy, as its readers' comments continue to show:

Let´s hope someone is waiting for him when he gets out.

Posted_by: mrcrocker


His face should be shown in British Papers and TV News every day from now on. Like this, when he gets out, everybody will recognize him in the street and turn his life into hell!! He will then be the one eager to leave the country!!! Posted_by: joh123

Chindamo told other inmates he expected to serve at least 18 years. When he comes up for parole next year, the board must ensure that prediction comes true.

Instead of swallowing any claptrap about him being a changed man.


Considering the reverse midas touch that the Sun has recently had when it's previously intervened in judicial decisions, it perhaps ought to have known better than to order the parole board around. No such luck. One can only hope its bad luck continues.

P.S.
For those fascinated by the Sun's front page splash on "OUR KEELEY PUTS BOOT INTO PUTIN!" (geddit?!) it's another example of the Sun putting its own thoughts into the mouths of its page 3 girls, something that Rebekah Wade instituted when she became editor. Gorgeous pouting Keeley, who previously bawled when an explicit sex tape of hers was leaked onto the internet, despite getting her tits out for numerous publications (probably something to do with not getting paid for it), says:

“They have a ruddy cheek spying on us from these monster planes. It’s just a pathetic signal that they are investing in their armed forces again. So what, our RAF heroes will see them off every time.”

For those not so interested in Russia's attempt to regain its superpower status and create a multipolar rather than a unipolar world once again, the Sun asks its readers whether Keeley's sacks of fat are better than Russian Kristina's, apparently the top page three girl of Russian daily "Tvoi Den". Yes, it's official, the disease is spreading.

Labels: , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

8/23/2007 07:42:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 

Rehabilitation can never win against the demands for a pound of flesh.

Just how wrong were the original reports about the reasons for why Learco Chindamo couldn't be deported then? Despite nearly every news organisation blaming the decision almost instantly on the Human Rights Act, from the BBC to the Guardian, from the Mail to the Sun, the actual decision was taken not under Article 8 of the HRA, as we were told, but rather on the 2004 EU directive on citizenship, which gives those who have spent over 10 years in one nation state protection from summary deportation to another. It was only if this directive had not applied in Chindamo's case that Article 8 could then then have come into play; as such, it was a secondary factor in the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal's ruling that he should stay in Britain.

Not that this has stopped even the Times from splashing on the "threat" posed by Chindamo. This supposed threat, taken from the Home Office's submission to the panel on why Chindamo should be deported, was so far from being conclusive, as well as downright disengenuous, that the panel rightly dismissed it. The relevant part of the letter is reproduced by Unity, and ought to be compared to the coverage in the Times, Sun and Mail:

In the revised reasons for deportation letter it is noted that it is unlikely that the appellant will reoffend, and that he accepts his responsibility for his offences and has undertaken courses for anger management. It notes however that his current behaviour and actions and day-to-day life are very closely monitored. There is reference there to one escorted visit, though we accept that the evidence is in fact that he has been on two escorted visits and three unescorted visits. The point is also made in the refusal letter that the court has deemed that the appellant’s crime is of such severity that he will always continue to be a threat to the community such that his release on licence would be on the basis that he might be recalled to prison at any moment for any breach of his conditions. The point is made that he has been assessed and that he is subject to the highest level of multi-agency public protection arrangements (Mappa) (Level 3). In this regard though we must bear in mind the point to which we were referred by Mr Scannell that that assessment was not made on account of the appellant being a threat to the public but because of the likelihood of media scrutiny and/or public interest. The letter does note that risk factors might increase because of media and public scrutiny that the appellant might receive. It also comments that the OAsys report notes that there are occasions where the appellant has overacted to situations and there are severe concerns with finding him appropriate accommodation on release if allowed to remain in the United Kingdom. He would need to be excluded from certain parts of the country, community integration would be a problem on release and he might suffer a backlash. The letter states that the appellant’s notoriety might make him feel excluded from society as he had been before and there was a significant risk that his previous disregard for authority and the law might resurface and result in him coming to adverse attention. As a consequence it was considered that he posed a continuing risk to the public and that his offences were so serious that he represents a genuine and present and sufficiently serious threat to the public in principle such as to justify his deportation.

In other words, the only justification that the Home Office could come up with for his deportation was that because of the adverse press coverage likely around his time of release, it'd be better for him if he was removed from the country entirely. Never mind that he was no longer considered a threat, that he had completed anger management courses, as well as 3 GCSEs and a NVQ, despite not being able to write his address when he entered prison, and that he had shown genuine remorse for his crime, all of that was secondary to the government's concern that it was likely to get it in the neck whether he was deported or not. Their last laughable argument was that he had overreacted on a couple of occasions to certain situations. I think all of us might overreact if we too had been kept in the constant uncertainty and insecurity of prison for twelve years.

What the Times additionally doesn't mention, for reasons to be explained shortly, was that the governor of Ford open prison had made a submission for the tribunal to be held behind closed doors because of the previous reaction of the press to Chindamo being allowed out on day release to visit his family. To quote the relevant paragraph from the ruling (DOC):

In particular he referred to the memo from Ms Radford, the Governor of HM Prison Ford, dated 25 April 2006, to be found at pages 63 and 64 of Mr Scannell’s bundle. Among others things she referred to the fact that on day release in February 2006 the appellant had been pursued by members of the press and an article appeared in the Sun newspaper three days later. There were further follow-up articles in the Sun, the Daily Express and the Brighton Argus. Ms Radford expressed her deep concern that they were ‘managing offenders by media’ and spending more time playing down risk than explaining their offender management strategies and how those more effectively protected the public than hysterical misinformed articles in the gutter press.

And we really are talking about the gutter press here. The Scum splashed Chindamo's release on the front page, calling it an "outrage":

THE killer of headmaster Philip Lawrence has been let out of jail early — despite an emotional warning it would “destroy” his victim’s family twice.

Former teenage gangster Learco Chindamo, now 25, was allowed an unsupervised day outing from Ford Open Prison in West Sussex.


Yep, that's right, Chindamo, like all over prisoners coming towards the end of a long prison sentence, had been allowed out for a whole day on his own as part of the general program towards preparing him for his eventual release. The article also willfully misquotes Mrs Lawrence: she had made the warning after Chindamo had appealed against the length of his sentence, an appeal that was denied. It was nothing to do with his day release. The Sun additionally published what its readers' felt should have been done with Chindamo to start with:

He should have got a suspended sentence - suspended from the end of a rope.

Sachilles


The next day Mrs Lawrence was herself in print, condemning what she thought was "a jolly day out" and thanking the Sun for bringing it to her attention. Most likely as a result of the Scum's coverage, Chindamo was as a result moved back to a closed jail, despite what the governor of Ford open prison described as his measured reaction to being followed by members of the press. The Sun subsequently referred to Chindamo as "evil" in its leader condemning the situation, saying he should be behind bars for life. The newspaper ought to have taken that up with the judge who gave the twelve year sentence, and not with the person who had been trying his hardest to rehabilitate himself, only to be vilified again in the tabloids because of a decision made by the prison service.

Mrs Lawrence herself has also now been making nonsense statements that seem to owe more to the Sun's line in rhetoric than the more dignified, understanding approach she had favoured on the previous day.

“It takes away our human rights and gives it to them — and that is wrong.”

“In a way I am glad this ruling has brought the whole human rights debate to the fore. Something has to be done to balance things. At the moment the criminal is the only one getting the rights. I felt I had to come forward and speak up for my husband.”

It only looks as if the criminal is getting the rights because the press never report on the other cases and the government is too spineless to defend the act. As I wrote yesterday, the families of murder victims have used it to obtain inquiries into their deaths, while Katie Ghose outlines 3 cases in which the right to a family life has been used to defend individuals wrongly taken away or banned from seeing their relatives. These are the ordinary people being protected, but their stories are boring compared to the latest instance of human rights madness. The Sun also completely misunderstands the act in its entirety, claiming that judges give more weight to Article 8 than to the right to life, which is not just patently absurd, but also completely untrue. It also refers to bits of it being politically correct; would that a reference to the right to freedom of expression, which the Sun so obviously loathes when it gets pulled up on its lies?

As Justin argues, Chindamo ought to be a model for how prison can work. Coming in illiterate, his success in gaining qualifications, counselling other inmates, accepting his guilt and showing remorse mark him out as one of the success stories of how prisoners can be rehabilitated, given the right circumstances, facilities and the necessary resources. Instead, all of that has now been dismissed out of hand, rejected without a thought by the press and reactionaries who want a pound of flesh rather than the evidence that "bad people" can indeed change. The Sun says that his lawyer and Jack Straw should hang their heads in shame; how bitterly hypocritical of a newspaper that today prints the following:

NEVER mind deportation — what’s he doing being let out of prison if he killed a headmaster in cold blood? I hope this evil killer is hounded by the press and vigilante mobs until he dies.
Germuluv

The government it seems would like that: maybe then it'll convince the appeal panel Chindamo really does have to be deported, disgracefully for his own safety.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

8/22/2007 09:11:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, August 21, 2007 

The rights and wrongs of deportation.


In trying to respond to the at times irrational prejudices and misconceptions adopted by the tabloid press, the biggest obstacles to arguing the point of the other side is just how powerful emotion and anger can be in defending if not the indefensible, then certainly the highly questionable.

So it is in trying to work out a coherent riposte to the points made both by Frances Lawrence, widow of the murdered headteacher Philip Lawrence, and to the arguments additionally made by the newspapers backing her up, regarding the decision by the Asylum and Immigration tribunal not to deport Learco Chindamo back to his country of origin, Italy. Unlike some of those who have lambasted the Human Rights Act in the past, often erroneously, Mrs Lawrence makes highly articulate points regarding the on the face of it deeply hurtful decision that it breaches his right to a family life protected under Article 8 for the deportation to go ahead. Still clearly grieving and traumatised by how the life of her husband was snatched away in such a pointless and meaningless fashion, it's difficult not to be moved by the position she finds herself in, almost 12 years' after his death. Having presumed that his removal from this country would be automatic or at the very least go through without such a struggle, all the hurt she most likely thought was over has been brought to the surface again. Her argument, that she has always supported the Human Rights Act, but that she feels that there has to be some kind of responsibility attached to it which takes into account how those who appeal under its usage have themselves acted, is one that's likely to strike a chord with many that believe that the the criminal justice system has bent over backwards for too long to protect the rights of the criminal rather than those of the victim.

All of which makes it all the more difficult to respectfully disagree with Mrs Lawrence without drifting into condescension or ridiculing her arguments. She quite clearly doesn't deserve to have all this brought up again. Firstly, the facts have to be set out as we know them. Chindamo was brought here at either the age of 5 or 6, as reports differ. Born to a Filipino mother and fathered by a Italian man linked to the mafia, he has had no contact with his dad since 1986, when his mother moved here to get away from her violent husband. He speaks no Italian, and most likely has few solid memories of life before he was brought to Britain. The only things that still link him to Italy are his passport and his parentage. He was sentenced to a minimum of 12 years in prison for the murder of Philip Lawrence, who died after being stabbed outside his school when he stepped in to stop a younger, 13-year-old boy from being attacked by the gang Chindamo belonged to, subsequently linked to at least two other violent crimes, although he had no involvement in either. According to his lawyers, his time in prison has changed him irrevocably, now counselling other inmates on how they themselves have ended up in jail, trying to persuade them to change their own ways. He's completed a NVQ in health and social care and plans, if and when released, to start a career in nursing. On the face of it, if his lawyers can be believed, Chindamo has been a model prisoner.

Secondly, as alluded to by other experts, and now apparently confirmed by the Guardian, the decision that he should not be deported was not just taken under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, but also as a result of recent EU legislation which governs the transfer of EU citizens between member states. Under such law, those sent home must be judged to pose a "genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat" to society as a whole, a definition that excludes nearly everyone except terrorist suspects. Chindamo may have posed such a threat at the time of Lawrence's murder, but the tribunal decided that he does not now. In addition to this, the fact that Chindamo was brought up here, that he has no real ties to Italy and cannot speak the language would mean that his right to a family life would be breached if he were to be deported.

This it seems to me is a difficult but correct decision. It differs from the cases of most of the other foreign prisoners because of how old he was when he was brought here; while they moved here for economic or other reasons once they had reached adulthood, Chindamo had no personal choice where he was taken to or lived. That he committed his crime after spending around ten years in this country, a far longer proportion of his life than he spent elsewhere, also makes him our responsibility rather than Italy's. To deport him now would be to punish him twice, forcing him to start his life over yet again. There's also no guarantee that Chindamo will even be released yet, as his minimum sentence doesn't end until next year, and he will then subject to a parole panel review. As he was sentenced to life, he will subject to recall to prison if he breaks the conditions of his parole or commits any other offence. The minimum length of his sentence should perhaps be as open to question as the tribunal decision is. Is twelve years of imprisonment a sufficient punishment for taking a life, even if committed while still a minor in the eyes of the law? We can equally argue that Chindamo has rightly had the best years of his life taken from him for his crime, but if released he will still be either 26 or 27, with most of his life still ahead of him.

According to the Sun, Mrs Lawrence has also now said the following:

“In Article 2 of the Human Rights Act my husband had the right to life.

“Chindamo destroyed that right yet he has used the legal process to enable him to live as described in Article 8.

"The Act works in his best interest. It is ill-equipped to work in my family or for people in my situation. That seems to me a major conundrum.”


It's worth pointing out that the act has not just worked in "his" best interest, but rather in the interests of anyone who feels that they have been the victim of an injustice. Just last week the the 7/7 survivors and associated families informed the government of their intention to seek a full independent inquiry, as provided under Article 2, as Mrs Lawrence refers to. Vera Bryant, whose daughter was murdered by a man released from prison, also successfully applied under Article 2 for an inquest into her death which the government had denied. As Unity also points out, although the Human Rights Act was not signed into law until 1998, after Mr Lawrence's death, justice was served, with his killer caught and imprisoned. His rights were properly served. Mrs Lawrence has said that although she has not forgiven Chindamo, she has never wished him ill, and Chindamo himself has apparently offered his sympathies to her, hoping that the decision would not cause her any additional grief. How much either of them actually mean such comments is open to question, but at least both sides seem able to forget if not forgive, something often lacking in similar cases.

It may well be that the government itself did little to prepare Mrs Lawrence for the possibility that Chindamo would not be deported, as it surely knew that there was more than a chance that such an appeal would be successful. She also raises the legitimate point that such laws don't take into account the views and appeals of those most affected by the subsequent rulings they lead to, ignoring the voices of the ordinary people they are meant to both protect and deal with. The question has to be how far though we allow the at times retributive and vengeful views of victims and those wronged interfere with justice rightly being blind; we've seen statements from the families of murder victims introduced into the courts before sentencing, do we also let the families get involved in the hearings of such appeal tribunals? Or do we have to rely that the judges' in those cases already take into account fully how they are going to be affected by their decisions?

None of this though is an argument for the repealing of the Human Rights Act itself, as Mrs Lawrence herself doesn't seem to be suggesting, although the newspapers taking up her cause, especially the Mail, are most certainly calling for exactly that, as is the Sun. The Tories, whose own plans for a "British" bill of rights which would almost certainly look more or less the same as the HRA have already been aired and dismissed by Ken Clarke as "xenophobic legal nonsense", have jumped on the case, with David Cameron already taking the rhetoric of the Sun straight on board, claiming that there is now "anarchy" in some parts of the UK, and that this is "a shining example of what is going wrong in our country". Some might argue that it's a shining example of our belief in tolerance and justice for all, in that disproportionate punishment has no more place in our society than murder itself does. David Davis, who ought to know better, also said that it was a "demonstration of clumsy incompetence" that Chindamo couldn't be sent back to his "own country". Can Italy really be called his home country when he has spent the vast majority of his life here, regardless of his crime?

However painful it is for Mrs Lawrence, for Chindamo to be treated differently simply because of the fact he has an Italian passport and committed a well publicised, heinous crime would be an injustice in itself. At times, such decisions do seem outrageous, beyond comprehension and downright wrong, ignoring the voices of those they hurt the most, but they are never taken without all the options being considered, insult to common sense as they are denounced or not. It might seem condescending to say so, but hopefully she will come to terms with the decision and respect it in the time to come, however illegitimate she thinks it is. As for the tabloids, their minds were already made up about the act, and trying to defend it time and again after all their lies, smears and distortions becomes an ever more dispiriting and difficult task. That they should take advantage once again only shows how low and dishonourable their motives are.

Labels: , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

8/21/2007 06:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, August 20, 2007 

Anarchy in the UK?

How then was your weekend? Did you go anywhere, or just stay in and reminisce on how your life's slowly slipping away while watching box sets of the X-Files like I did? If you went out, was anything unusual, out of place or just seem different? Was there more vomit than usual in the gutter, had the police been strung up from the nearest lamppost, were gangs of marauding youngsters engaged in bloody battles for survival and who had control of the conch? Or was everything pretty much as well, normal?

For satire and parody to work best, there has to be an incredibly fine line between the truth and the embellishment of it. Sometimes, even the best of us slip into self-parody, often without realising it. Does this occur because we're dubious of our own pretensions and doubtful about what it is we're talking about? Or is it completely subconscious, happening for reasons beyond our own control that we might not recognise for a time to come?

I ask all of this because of today's Sun front page, which claims that Britain is now a country under siege, anarchy finally emerging in the UK, as yobs rule the streets and knife crime soars. The Mirror also joins in, with its own survey which finds that 42% don't feel safe in the streets of their neighbourhood at night. Is it true? Has the inevitable really happened?

Rather, Britain seems to have had a pretty typical weekend. The Sun bases its anarchy claim on the fact that a police station was besieged by a mob, that a man and a teenage boy were murdered in separate incidents, and that paramedics were attacked while providing aid to a man and a boy. Actually, the Sun didn't put it anywhere near as calmly as that. Here, dear reader, is a trip in to the world of Sun journalism, which even by its standards seems to have descended into the realms of unreasonable hysteria or even self-parody:

BRITAIN is on the brink of ANARCHY after a weekend of yob violence, campaigners said last night.

As figures revealed knife crime had DOUBLED in two years, a string of incidents left law-abiding citizens living in terror.

A mob BESIEGED a police station.

A man and a teenage boy were MURDERED in separate incidents and paramedics were ATTACKED as they tended a father and son.

In one county, 999 callers were told there were only THREE police on duty in a town of 22,000 people.


If we first consider the murders from a statistical basis, 2 in a weekend is actually lower than the average. The official police figures recorded 755 homicides last year. Do the math: that's 14 a week and 2 every day, which when you consider there's a population of around 60 million is low, and is by the standards of most other countries.

The knife crime statistics, produced by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies do on the face of it look rather shocking. The figures both Sun and Guardian articles refer to aren't available online yet, so I can't see how they were reached (I've emailed them asking for a copy), but is it really possible there are 175 robberies every day involving a knife, meaning that the number of muggings involving a blade have doubled from 25,500 to 64,000 within 2 years? According to the British Crime Survey (PDF), the risk of being a victim of violent crime is 3.6%, although this rises to 13.8% if you're male and between the age of 16 and 24. The police recorded robbery statistics increased by three percent over the last year, but this was still 16% down on the last real peak in robbery which was in 2001/02. The Mirror article also dabbles in suggesting its YouGuv poll says something it doesn't: the opening paragraph says 42% are too scared to leave their homes at night, but the poll only suggests 42% don't feel safe in their neighbourhood at night, not that they don't leave their house because of it. How many people honestly do feel safe walking around anywhere on their own at night? I sure I'm not alone in suggesting it makes me apprehensive at the very least.

Naturally, spouting statistics does nothing to bring back those who have died or others who have had their mobile phones or mp3 players unceremoniously stolen, and it's certainly no match to such articles which attempt to set out what some do indeed see as the reality on the streets. The question has to be though on just how much influence such constant scaremongering, both in the press and on the TV has on the public mood and perception of how safe they feel and how safe their town or local area is.

Perhaps it just happens to be a coincidence that this latest crisis of lawlessness has apparently happened during the silly season, where over the weekend news was increasingly difficult to come by, what with the Heathrow protesters deciding not to storm the runways after all, after the press informing everyone they were going to be leaving hoax suspect packages everywhere. As the old maxim goes, no news is a great excuse to make it up. This isn't to deny that these are indeed genuine fears felt by a large number of people, especially in the inner cities, but is this really anywhere near anarchy?

Even if we accept the scale of the problem is near what the tabloids are suggesting, what's the solution? Ever since the murder of James Bulger the rhetoric has gotten tougher, the punishments harsher and according to both the police and the BCS the chance of being a victim of crime is at its lowest in a generation, but still we have the same never relenting demands for even more draconian action. Peter Fahy, after making some daft comments about taking children into care for being drunk at the weekend, was more thoughtful in comments recorded by the Grauniad: suggesting a rebalancing of the criminal justice system, not in favour of the victim as Blair and co preached, but in favour of rehabilitation and then sanctions rather than punishment. The most obvious problem with this though is manifest: despite the early release scheme, which the Sun and the Tories predicted would result in 25,000 prisoners getting out early, the prison population is actually back at the 80,000 level, meaning police cells are having to be used yet again. Rehabilitation in overcrowded jails is made much more difficult, if not nigh on impossible. The Sun's simplistic solution, to put ever more police officers on the streets, even though we have the highest number of police ever, can also have the opposite effect: it increases the fear that crime is more rampant than it actually is, and the actual deterrent effect it's meant to have has never actually been demonstrated.

Whether this latest panic dies down again once some other news comes along or not, the resulting underlying mood doesn't go away. Some are scared, and the news they read and see only increases their worries. Perhaps the best way to illustrate how some of this journalism influences the public is in one of the comments on the Sun's website itself:

this is how dirty,disgusting Britain is nowadays, i absolutely hate the country with all its yobs,paedophiles,rapists,murderers,criminals, WAGS, cheap girls,shallow girls. there is absolutely NOTHING good about this country...even the food chain is contaminated on every level.my advice is to get out of this disgusting low level country with its politicians with mental issues and the so called "Lords" who makes the most outrageous laws in the world.

Either that, or even online newspapers continue to attract those who used to write in green ink.

Labels: , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

8/20/2007 10:18:00 PM | | | links to this post

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Last posts

Archives

Email me
Syndicate this site (XML)
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates