Teenager jailed for 18 months still in prison 18 years later
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
The psychological burden of an indefinite sentence is undoubtedly an obstacle to rehabilitation, as are the wider issues of understaffing and overcrowding in the prison estate, but let's not kid ourselves. IPP sentences were created specifically to deal with prisoners who habitually reoffend on release. These are people who were on a revolving door of offending and imprisonment before their IPP sentence, and who would almost certainly be stuck in that cycle again if their IPP sentence was quashed.
IPPs are unjust and the current government will almost certainly retroactively resentence most or all IPP prisoners within this parliament, but the underlying problem is still there. We could definitely do a better job of rehabilitating this cohort, but even the best-funded and most liberal systems have had fairly meagre success in actually breaking the cycle of reoffending; the much-heralded low recidivism rates in Scandinavia are substantially a reporting artifact rather than a meaningful difference in outcomes.
I see what you did there. Convenient.
First he says he knows recidivism in scandinavia is not low.
> Headline recidivism rates aren't really comparable across jurisdictions, because there are so many variables - what kind of offences lead to imprisonment, what counts as "reoffending", how long you follow up for, how likely people are to be arrested, charged and convicted etc. One study found that recidivism rates could vary from 9% to 53% based on the same underlying data, simply by changing the definitions. The more you try to standardise the methods, the smaller the difference in apparent recidivism rates.
Then when pushed his proof is that we cannot know that recidivism in scandinavia is not low.
Grade A bullshitter right there.
He could have used "high" and "USA" instead and it would have been the same.
But he didn't and made is initial argument sound stronger than it is. Classic motte-and-bailey argument.
Of course, a lot of people are lucky and able to navigate our everyday jungle, thrive and blablabla, but they - almost by definition - don't end up in prison, and those who do already - again, almost by definition - have problems.
Underfunded mental health systems inside and outside, piling on more traumatizing experiences here or there ... sure, for some people getting a few years gives them that wake up call, but in general the problem seems to be that the whole police/prison concept is just a shitty bandaid on wounds festering from all kinds of problems (economical, political all of them usually point to psychosocial/cultural issues).
The whole point about this situation is that the sentences were applied to people who do NOT fit that description (not my just view, also the view of the architect of this atrocity, David Blunkett), so in the majority of cases in question your reasoning does not apply.
IPP prisoners can't be arbitrarily detained forever. There has to be a reason for the refusal of parole or for a recall to prison. There are clearly significant shortcomings in how IPP prisoners are supported, but it's also clear that a cohort of people who are living with drug addiction, severe mental illness and behavioural problems are going to struggle to stay on the straight and narrow even in ideal circumstances.
https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-cont...
> people with complex problems, chaotic lives and a high and ongoing risk of reoffending.
Surely that applies to almost all prisoners?
I don't think that you have addressed my point though, which is that the people who have been given these sentences are not those supposedly targeted by the law.
I couldn't disagree with any of the points that you make, but I think we're talking past each other. There is a threshold at which these sentences might make sense, and we risk conflating discussion about those cases with the much larger number of problematic cases where the logic is - at least quantitatively - different.
The slippery slope argument can be made that this power could be abused (and likely is to some degree anyway) and that justifications could be made to apply to just about anyone. But if we assume the best intentions here, then something like this does make sense. There will always be a small percentage of people in any large society who are just going to commit violent and criminal acts over and over again.
I think most prisoners are in the category where they are regular people who made a bad choice due to things like environmental factors, poor judgement, and the like. And there are a few prisoners who are just wired differently - they will never not be dangerous. The trick is correctly sorting between the two.
Why would you do that?
Or to put it another way, how much of this indefinite prison sentence due to reoffending is caused by prison guards assuming these people are bad apples and finding every fault they can with them to extend their sentence?
The reasonable thing to do in such cases is to give the inmate a new trial for each of those alleged offenses. This is very basic due process.
That's the thing about "due process", isn't it? It's just a phrase that basically means "the law", and the law can be changed by legislation and judges, and the law can be unjust. The phrase is nothing more than giving airs of being impartial or some check and balance against the law. This hapless fellow got his "due process".
The first element of due process is that a citizen be notified that the State is mobilizing its resources with the intention of depriving them of their life, liberty, and/or property.
Another core tenet of due process is that, once notified, you get a chance to submit evidence in your favor before an impartial adjudicator, precisely to avoid the issues in my first paragraph.
Normal parole boards in America with American due process also do not have an obligation to release people unless their guilt for further crimes can be proven beyond reasonable doubt, but they're also part of what is called due process.
You can argue this legal punishment is no good, but you can't argue for due process because he got it. In fact that is exactly what people have argued, hence this punishment being removed from the books. But in a cruel and seemingly unjust twist of "due process" of the law, the punishment was not vacated for all of those previously convicted. So if anything you would plead for an exception to normal due process here and ask that the change be retroactively applied, wouldn't you?
Im genuinely repulsed by the general sentiment here (and in general) regarding incarcerated people. It doesn't help that crime based reporting has been flooding social media and news channels at disproportionate rates post 9/11's 24 hour news cycle. Its almost always an obvious attempt to evoke an emotional response too, despite crime steady decreasing over 50+ years by a fairly large margin.
This is particularly evident in American systems of modern slavery. In states like Georgia, prisoners are forced to work 40+ hours a week in places such as fast food establishments (McDonald's etc). They make well under minimum wage, and they're not allowed to miss work. Simple missteps result in punishment, loss of "good time". This means no phone calls, no visits, no venturing outside.
Such a system, if employed on everyday people, would be unthinkable. But for prisoners it's not only prevalent, we view it as a privilege. The right to work and earn money is so gracious to give to these dogs, and they should be thankful. Parole, too, is a reward, and they should be so lucky to endure 20+ years of slavery for the mere chance of getting out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventive_detention#New_Zea...
That's in the first paragraph.
> [IPP] was intended to protect the public against criminals whose crimes were not serious enough to merit a normal life sentence but who were regarded as too dangerous to be released when the term of their original sentence had expired. It is composed of a punitive "tariff" intended to be proportionate to the gravity of the crime committed, and an indeterminate period which commences after the expiry of the tariff and lasts until the Parole Board judges the prisoner no longer poses a risk to the public and is fit to be released. [1]
That last bit is even worse than it sounds: the burden of proof is on the prisoner to prove that they're no longer a danger to society, instead of requiring the Parole Board to prove that they're still a danger. Between that burden and the rest of the Parole Board's workload, it's taking forever to get anyone released.
IPP was eliminated in 2012 because it was unjust and overused, but politicians made the conscious decision to not retroactively undo it because of the bad PR it'd cause if some violent offender was released and killed someone.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_protec...
So it's ok if a violent offender jailed after 2012 gets released and kills someone. Typical politican logic.
It is. My comment was a (failed) attempt at sarcasm. If the new ruling is thought to be more just, it should be retroactively applied.
But the gov't has been slow to review people's cases and so folks are stuck.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_prot...
Basically, the “18 month sentence” is a minimum sentence for the crime(s). But after that period, a parole board is supposed to rule on whether this person is fit to rejoin society.
What I don’t understand:
- are parole boards just denying for any reason? Why are people serving such long sentences?
- is it a backlog of cases to review to blame?
- or is this similar to “cash for kids” scandal in the US? Basically, teenagers were sentenced harshly under the pretense of “zero tolerance” and sent to prison. But, in reality it was motivated primarily by the need for private prison systems to fill the cells and many judges getting kickbacks.
Yes. There's guidelines for parole but they're just guides. Personal bias, as well as potential monetary values, keep prisoners in prison. For example, Georgia, based on statistics, should have a parole rate of 80% for non-violent offenders. The parole rate is 8%. This is for non-violent offenders. That's an order of magnitude of difference.
The culture around parole and personal biases fuel this. Ultimately, the community and parole judge can only LOSE by allowing parole. In the best-case scenario, they break even - nothing bad happens if you let someone loose. In the worst case, they commit a crime. They're heavily biased to preserve the interests of themselves, the prisons, and their community. The well-being of the prisoner is least important because they are a criminal.
> motivated primarily by the need for private prison systems to fill the cells and many judges getting kickbacks
There's some of this as well. Some of these prisoners in (again, Georgia) are being coerced to work. Parole is a carrot above their head. They're paid less than minimum wage to literally flip burgers at McDonald's. It's a win-win situation for everyone involved. The prison makes money (garnishes half the wages), local shops get cheap labor, and "dangerous" people are kept locked up. Only the prisoners lose.
"guilty to two robberies and two common assaults, while asking that a further four robberies, one attempted robbery and one assault occasioning actual bodily harm be taken into consideration."
Also:
"2020 - Luke Ings appeared over videolink from HMP Long Lartin at Worcester Crown Court yesterday where he denied four counts of administering a poisonous or noxious substance with intent. The 31-year-old was arraigned by the clerk, denying four counts of administering 'human excreta' unlawfully and maliciously with intent to injure"
No mention about this in the article, looks like a very biased source.
So he is still in jail indefinitely for his original crime.
The crime you mention doesn't allow him to be kept in jail indefinitely, not for the original offense.
I think it's pretty clearly manifestly unjust.
Sentences are based on intent, not outcomes. Fighting can result in life lasting injuries.
He isn't in prison to punish him for one specific crime, he's in prison to keep him from victimizing people, because his history of crime makes it likely that he will keep doing that.
Idk about you but I think a fight in McDonald's and hurling poo at someone don't deserve decades long prison sentences.
https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/18158037.prisoner-accus...
* we gain nothing from locking them up, and it costs us a lot to do this
* redeeming them might not work and if it does it costs us a lot
* we don't want them around
You could try to argue for shipping them to some island, shipping them to another country etc but there's some obvious shortcomings to this such as slave rebellion, other countries punishing through sanctions if you ship your criminals to them etc, so am I missing something or is the natural solution to your position, swift and summary execution?
This guy did it multiple times.
You can also find plenty of examples where in fights, someone got thrown to the ground on their head, and got a concussion. That shit can be life altering.
>Fighting and violence is very normal
Yes, I understand this. People make irrational choices all the time.There are very little things that prevent someone from drinking and getting behind the wheel of a car or a truck. And yet, the support for mandatory breathalyzer devices standard in vehicles to be able to operate them is never going to be high. So people are making the irrational choice to risk getting killed by a drunk driver rather than lose some fake "freedom". And people like the commenters here also make the irrational choice to view fighting in a way less serious light then it should be.
In this case, though the problem is solved - a person who should not be in society is not, and it should remain that way.
Your "cut and dry" philosophy flies in the face of reality.
A kid is raised in the hood, beaten by their parents, watches someone get shot to death in a drive by one day and the next week someone shot in the back by cops. In school they quickly learn that bullies leave you alone if you punch back. On the street doubly so, they learn demonstrating a willingness for violence mostly gets you left alone.
At 17 years old they're at a McDonald's and someone shoulder checks them. Maybe it was an accident, maybe it wasn't, but the kid tosses a "what the fuck?", and the other person had done it by accident but is mad at the reaction so on a whim says "fuck you bitch." Our main character throws a punch, a fight ensues, the cops come, he's arrested.
This person should be jailed forever?
This makes no sense to me from any analysis angle. Ethically, practically, capitalistically, no matter how I slice it I can't square it. If you argued for him to be immediately executed it would at least make a little bit of capitalistic sense and be logical within the context of a fucked up ethical system (a non evidence based one) but no instead you want them locked up for life.
Why? And why not argue instead for summary execution of the undesirables?
The solution in many cases I would say is not punishment / imprisonment, but rather help, in the form of therapy or education or something. Of course some restrictions and some kind of warning and period where you are watched more closely are suitable, but it doesn't have to be hard punishment right away.
Fighting is unethical, but many prisons and law cases are much more unethical than most fights.
Not just a couple fights.
As an example, in Seattle there was a documentary called “Seattle is Dying” that covered the trend of crimes and repeat offenders, due to the city’s lenient restorative justice policies. A person featured in that documentary had been arrested nearly 50 times and convicted more than 35 times. But he was nevertheless released back into the streets, due to progressive restorative justice policies. He ultimately murdered his girlfriend before killing himself, inside the infamous CHAZ/CHOP autonomous zone:
https://komonews.com/news/operation-crime-justice/travis-ber...
Fighting is something that can cause lasting damage, so it should be treated seriously.
When someone is found guilty of an offense, its based on intent, not the outcome. Judging people based on outcome would lead to people thinking they can get away with crime if nobody gets hurt, which you don't want because people make bad choices all the time.
As such, if someone is found guilty of fighting, or otherwise any action that could result in life lasting injury to someone, regardless of outcome, its absolutely reasonable to expect that the punishment should be prison for life, both as a deterrent, and as a way to keep that person permanently out of society.
The solution to not being in that situation is simple, don't assault people. Its not that hard.
There is a saying eye for eye and tooth for tooth. It is just disproportionate to lock someone up 20 years for a brawl and misdemeanour. Also there is a big difference between thinking and saying, saying and doing. What you are talking about is Deterrence Theory. If people escalate violence immediately the outcome will be bad, similarly the state shouldn't escalate violence. I mean to say that if you said something mean to me, I would escalate the situation if I hit you in response. Being mean back to you would keep it down or better yet I don't engage.
Similarly I could argue all car drivers should expect prison for life, because their driving could result in life lasting injury or even death.
If that's the case, we clearly can't trust the justice system, so my question on how we determine whether the State is issuing violence or force is the same.
By locking up Chauvin unjustly, has the State used force, or violence?
So fighting is still the "eye" no matter which way you look at it, and should be punished accordingly, no matter what the actual outcome is. "Tooth" would be yelling and shouting, which is how normal adults should express anger
It doesn't matter if this type of punishment is a deterrent or not, the most important thing is to remove people like that from society, permanently.
Eye for and eye and tooth for a tooth is to say that if you hit my eye black or if I lose a teeth, its not enough to apologise.
I mean on paper it sounds reasonable but in the context of this story its wrong to jail someone infinitelly for a brawl. If it was a serial killer I would agree with you. A murder? Idk maybe it was in self defense. Its complicated and there is no easy solution.
Life penalties didn’t prevent these assaults. So the penalty is vengeance rather than deterrence.
Dude come on. I know that you know this is a shit argument, so Im not even going to entertain it.
>So the penalty is vengeance
The "penalty" is not a penalty, its a removal of that person from the rest of society. Like I said, I would be for full reintegration centers. Put that person on LSD/Shroom/MDMA/Ketamine therapy, put him to work, build out reward systems for normal human behavior, and when he has demonstrated that he can hold down a job and resolve conflicts normally, put him back into society.
Like you, I'm also a consequentialist. Not everyone else is!
> So the penalty is vengeance rather than deterrence.
It is neither vengeance nor deterrence. It is (supposed to be) protection of the public from this (supposedly) dangerous individual.
But the comment you're replying to is also mentioning seven robberies and several other assaults, which you conveniently ignore just like the biased article that makes it sound like he's in prison only for a fight in McDonald's.
He's in prison to keep him from victimizing more people, and I think there's a huge difference whether that is done after one fight, or a history of crime after crime after crime.
Don't you think at some point ordinary non-criminal people deserve an assurance that this person won't be allowed to hurt them?
If your argument is that they have a criminal nature and will therefore commit some other crime because it is in their nature, that's a bit hard to accept. If your argument is that they are acting out against their prison environment and therefore can't be trusted in a completely different environment, that is also hard for me to accept. If your argument is that they have been moved into a halfway house but don't seem to be able to cope with normal society, I would probably probe that. Have they committed robberies while in the halfway house? Have they assaulted someone there?
I hate to paint all prison guards with a giant brush, but I have experienced first hand how normal people act out against mild authority like parents or teachers or coaches. I think many non-criminal people would fare very poorly in an environment of prison-style authority. Activists are often viewed poorly in regular society. In more authoritarian climates they become indistinguishable from criminals. That is not a good indicator of their expected behavior in less authoritarian climates.
No, I don't, because that's a false assurance. Governments, and especially the American and British governments, don't lock away sociopathic murderers, they lock away weed dealers and kids who make mistakes, mostly. Plenty of those mistakes have victims and those victims deserve justice - but locking up someone for 20 years and turning them into a hardened convict in torturous conditions isn't justice.
Last I read, something like 90% of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. Similar to kidnappings (it's usually one of the parents). It would be incorrect to believe you're safe, or safer, from harm because people are being locked in prisons. If anything, this system creates more harm.
If you're not British or American maybe it doesn't apply to you, but I think people seriously underestimate how life-ruining a chance encounter with the justice system of those countries can be, for things that "everyone" does, or for things that genuinely could happen to anyone. It's a common misconception that these justice systems are keeping people safe from, idk, roving bands of criminal drug pushing rapists or whatever.
It's a balance between his right to freedom and the rights of everyone else to not be made victim of his crimes. I think after a certain number of crimes, it's appropriate to weigh the latter over the former.
Edit: And I think the threshold should be less than ten violent crimes
Of course, the whole situation may as well be designed to literally drive people crazy, so nobody should be surprised when things like that happen.
Why is nobody sharpening an axe over this kid stuck in jail?
There are routes to challenge 'wrongful' detention authorised by a court, but not via habeas. Some IPP prisoners have been released by the Court of Appeal criminal division on a (very late) appeal against sentence where other factors appeared after the original sentencing. You can also challenge the refusal of the Parole Board to release you by judicial review, though this is a fairly high bar to clear.
It means you are classified dangerous and not curable. I guess this is the same in England. So there must be something seriously wrong with the guy. Mother doesn't see that obviously.
The indefinite sentences were abolished in 2012 because they were being overused. They just didn't retroactively eliminate the existing sentences and the Parole Board has taken forever to sort through the problem.
In 2016 the head of the Parole Board said they wanted to reduce the number of IPP sentences to 1,500 by 2020 [1], but you know... Tories happened.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-on-ipp-prisoner...
The authorities also don't want to be held to account for traumatising these people and any crimes they subsequently commit. 12 years is a murder tier stint, so pretty much all of them should just be released. However releasing a lot of dangerous people looks bad even if it's morally justified.
TBS also doesn't mean you're "incurable" That's just flat-out wrong. The entire point of TBS is to treat (i.e. cure) people.
Everything about your comment is wrong. There's a reason IPP got shot down for human rights violations and TBS hasn't been: because it's fundamentally different.
No it doesn't. It means you've got some sort of mental issue. Curable or not. TBS is more focused on treating the underlying issue instead of simple punishment or rehabilitation.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tre...
Like who the hell of a fucking idiot comes up with these stupid ass laws is beyond me
Just goes to show, if you give people power to ruin peoples lives and torture them with impunity, there is no shortage of "people" willing to fill such a role
And such lack of empathy is basically everywhere in society, though they conglomerate into business leadership roles in higher proportions
Bernardo should have probably best been executed. Or given a proper life sentence.
But this way, Canadians get to keep their progressive pieties vis a vis the US (no death penalty! No life in prison) and keep Bernardo in jail.