Riot sentences are not ‘disproportionate’
A small chorus of protest is developing at the harsh sentences being handed down on some of those convicted of rioting and looting. The word being bandied about most liberally (forgive the pun) is...
View ArticleTheresa May rejected Bill Bratton for one, morally repellent, reason: because...
Sometimes the attitudes of those in the "public" – whether that prefixes "sector" or "service" or "life" – can seem so baffling to those of us in the "private" counterpart. Today the deadline for...
View ArticleDavid Cameron is trying to sound brave – but the rioters will smell his fear
In his eloquent and convincing article in the Telegraph today, Paul Goodman describes why so many of David Cameron’s most impassioned statements of intent following the riots are destined to be wrecked...
View ArticleIf the riots are David Cameron’s 9/11, we’re doomed
Will the riots be David Cameron’s 9/11? In a Spectator interview with Fraser Nelson, Iain Duncan Smith agrees that this August might change the PM in the same way that the fall of the Twin Towers...
View ArticleThe International Criminal Court is, by any objective measurement, racist. So...
Imagine if there were a criminal court in Britain which only ever tried black people, which ignored crimes committed by whites and Asians and only took an interest in crimes committed by blacks. We...
View ArticleAfter the Ched Evans case, can we please have a grown-up discussion about...
When tweeters defied the Ryan Giggs injunction last year, dropping massive hints about the identity of this unnameable censorious football star, they were praised as warriors against a legalistic...
View ArticleThe right to attack a burglar sounds like justice to me
Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, is to announce a new criterion by which a householder will be judged if he physically harms a burglar he has discovered on his premises. If Mr Grayling gets his...
View ArticleCameron wants to end 'cushy' treatment of prisoners. My Somalian kidnappers...
David Cameron is planning to stop prisoners having Sky TV in their cells, in a bid to end "cushy conditions" in British jails. The PM is concerned that some prisoners see doing time as like being in a...
View ArticleChris Brown did a terrible thing, but he has served his time. He's not a...
For how much longer will R&B singer Chris Brown be referred to as “woman-beating R&B singer Chris Brown”? Forever? What about that old humane ideal of rehabilitation, of refusing to judge men...
View ArticleThe story of Jennice Lynch is about far more than a mother's worry
To the casual reader, the tale of Ruth Lynch and her daughter Jennice certainly seems an interesting story. The idea that a mother would ask a judge to send her own daughter to prison goes deeply...
View ArticleDavid Cameron invents laws to punish people he doesn't like. This is populism...
There is something very disturbing about the remarks made by the Prime Minister from the United States yesterday. Mr Cameron said that he is looking at "extending criminal offences" to cover market...
View ArticleChristmas Eve in the courtroom
“If the law supposes that,” said Mr Bumble, “the law is a ass”. And, let’s face it, there have been a lot of daft rulings handed down by our courts this year. Here is a selection of the latest...
View ArticleWoody Allen and William Roache: one tried by a Twitter mob, the other by a...
Last week verdicts were passed on two men accused of sexually abusing minors. The manner in which the verdicts were passed could not have been more different. Firstly, a "guilty verdict" was issued...
View Article'Justice must be seen to be done': televised courtrooms, Oscar Pistorius and...
As luck would have it, the email from the editor ("What do you think about the televisualisation of the Oscar Pistorius trial?") arrived just as I sat down for the post-work pint with two British...
View ArticleBrits are being carted off to face trial in foreign courts. Time to scrap the...
Essex police arrived out of the blue. They knocked on my constituent’s door, asked him to confirm his identify, before taking him down to the police station under arrest. After a brief court...
View ArticleBooze bracelets? Even Orwell did not foresee this dawn of the wearable policeman
Even with all their dystopian prescience, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell or Philip K Dick did not foresee a future state that would monitor its citizens' sweat for signs of deviant, boozy behaviour. I...
View ArticleThe medievalism of the campaign to stop Ched Evans from getting his old job back
One of the key building blocks of a civilised society is the rehabilitation of criminals. In modern, democratic nations, we don’t demonise criminals forever. We don’t brand them, or make them bear some...
View Article
