It Depends On Your Definition Of ‘Petty Offences’, Of Course

For those unconvinced that prime minister Keir Starmer really wants to fix Britain, look no further than his appointment of James Timpson as prisons minister. Timpson, chief executive of the eponymous family business best known for shoe fixing and key making, is not an MP and has been parachuted into the job by Starmer with a peerage and a seat in the Lords.

His qualifications for the role?

As for Timpson, he is a businessman and chair of the Prison Reform Trust, with an outstanding track record of supporting ex-offenders in work and a commonsense radicalism in his approach to justice.

The Prison Reform Trust does what it says on the tin: it campaigns for reform of the prison system. Rather than jailing more people, this means jailing fewer of them. It means not giving custodial sentences for petty offences to parents who shoplift to feed their children or to people with drug and mental health problems who should be getting support in hospital or the community rather than being jailed, when their problems invariably get worse, sometimes to the point where they take their own life.

It means not introducing a bill that could criminalise homeless people for smelling.

Which no-one actually did, of course!

The bill defines “something that is a nuisance” in relation to a person who “causes or does something capable of causing damage”. A section of the criminal justice bill defines that damage as including “excessive noise, smells”.

Which can mean leaving behind offensive smelling rubbish, like these charming people in the middle of our capital. Which our police seem to do nothing about despite the law being their's to uphold.

On Channel 4’s Ways to Change the World podcast in February, he cited the Netherlands as a good example of what prison policy should be like. “They’ve shut half their prisons. Not because people are less naughty in Holland – it’s because they’ve got a different way of sentencing, which is community sentencing. People can stay at home, keep their jobs, keep their homes, keep reading their kids bedtime stories – and it means they’re far less likely to commit crime again.”

Or is that 'far less likely to get caught again'..? 

In that interview, Timpson said a third of prisoners should definitely be jailed, another third should probably not be there and “need some other kind of state support”, while for the final third prison is “a disaster … because it just puts them back in the offending cycle”.

And for some people, that cycle is their culture and nothing will break them out of it, so the periods they spend in jail is the only surcease their long suffering neighnourhood gets.   

At the Prison Reform Trust, Timpson has campaigned for resentencing as recommended by the justice committee in September 2022. This would mean that prisoners who have served their tariff would be released. Starmer’s Labour was not brave enough to support resentencing when it was in opposition.

Because they knew how unpopular it would be.  

As prisons minister, Timpson is now in the perfect position to show the way forward – to fellow ministers, to entrepreneurs, to the populists and bigots who want to see ever more people locked up.

Funny you should mention populists and bigots who want people locked up, Timpson. They might not be the ones you think you have to deal with in your new role... 

The Nature vs Nurture Debate...

...looks like another 'Guardian' article trying to drum up sympathy for criminals might have inadvertantly provided us with the answer:

Nicol and Mooney grew up in a chaotic household in London. Their mother had six children and, Mooney says, terrible taste in men, who were unreliable at best. Her and Nicol’s father was from Saudi Arabia and left their mother when she was pregnant with Mooney. As a family, they stood out: “We were all different colours. Me and Tommy are brown, we have a white sister and the dads of my two younger brothers and sister are Jamaican.” They moved from home to home, sometimes living in refuges, escaping the violent men in their mother’s life.

And yet, despite similar upbringing, the two couldn't be more different. 

Mooney lives with her husband and two boys in a stylish, modern house, but asks me not to disclose the location because she has been attacked in the past for her campaigning. She looks around and says it couldn’t be more different from her and Nicol’s childhood. Her husband, a marketing executive, has done well for himself. As has she. Mooney taught nursery and primary schoolchildren before becoming an education adviser and academic.

She's a campaigner for her brother, the recidivist career criminal who the courts finally lost patience with and imposed a 99 year sentence to give the public some reprieve from his petty crimes. 

She thinks about the life Nicol could have led. “That’s what makes me so angry. The education system, the prison system; it’s all geared towards damaging the most damaged.”

As usual, no sympathy for the victims of her brother's depredations. 

Danger Is In Their Job Description, Judge...

Sentencing was adjourned because Richards refused to leave his cell. He refused to do so again today when he was jailed for life.

Judge Jeremy Richardson KC told Sheffield Crown Court: 'I regard the refusal of the defendant to attend court to be an act of cowardice. His arrogance is also demonstrated by this conduct.

'It is plain the defendant is replete with habitual violence. It is deeply ingrained. He is, in my judgment, an exceptionally volatile and dangerous man.

'I have my doubts whether it will ever be safe to release him.'

So, why not have him dragged before the court, as you can do? 

He added that he was 'not prepared to endanger the lives of prison officers to secure his attendance' by exercising the powers available to him.

*sighs* 

Finally! What Took So Long?

A judge has told a paedophile that the time has come to stop helping him and start punishing him.

Considerable efforts have been made to try to rehabilitate Barry Hardman, 32, but so far nothing has proved effective as he continued to access sick child abuse images online.

Because 'nothing' is all that they've tried! 

Hardman, most recently of Bodmin but formerly of Penzance and St Austell, appeared at Truro Crown Court for sentence having pleaded guilty to breaching a sexual harm prevention order and three charges of making indecent images of children.

Representing Hardman, Robin Smith said that he wants help to address his perversions but was realistic about his situation.

Adding to this, Steve Butterworth from the Probation Service said Hardman was “a man who chaos tends to follow”.

'Chaos' being a pretty good description on the Probation Service, of course... 

Judge Linford then went to speak about how the police visited Hardman’s home, leading to the offending coming to light. 

“What Mr Butterworth said is worrying. The time has come when efforts made to help you stop and efforts made to punish you start. The breach of the sexual harm prevention order was particularly serious because of your efforts to use the dark web and use software to disguise what you were up to.”

The efforts should have started from the first offence. Why didn't they? These people cannot be 'helped to stop offending'. Why are we wasting taxpayer money on them?