Criminal History
Clair Tiltman was a 16-year-old schoolgirl who had a close encounter with an older man over twenty years ago, one that resulted in a conviction for that man yesterday. If you think you know where I’m going with this, hold on a minute. I know it sounds like something we’ve heard with tedious regularity since 2012, but the man in question was not a radio, television or music celebrity who groomed and seduced her, and Clair Tiltman was not present in court to see the man sent down. He was Colin Ash-Smith, a knife-wielding psychopath who stabbed her to death in a Kent alleyway in 1993. Despite being interviewed within days of the attack and even having the gall to attend her funeral, Ash-Smith was belatedly charged with the murder of Clair Tiltman this year, whilst he was still serving time for a different knife attack on a different woman two years after murdering Clair Tiltman. He will be sentenced today.
The same day as a jury at the Inner London Crown Court took three hours to reach a guilty verdict relating to a crime committed two decades ago, a judge at Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester passed sentence on a sequence of crimes committed even further back in time – not the 1990s, but the 1960s and 1970s. This time, former DJ and (lest we forget) friend of Jimmy Savile, Ray Teret, was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for seven counts of rape and seven counts of indecent assault on ‘girls as young as twelve’.
This is not a competition to vote as to who was most deserving of a lengthy sentence or a debate on how the practice of adolescent girls throwing themselves as showbiz personalities without producing a birth certificate was a commonplace side-effect of the 60s’ pop culture explosion. Rather, it ponders on the difference between newly-unearthed hard evidence that wasn’t available in the past coming to light and leading to a conviction for the most serious crime of all, and a modern moral judgement of sexual behaviour in the latter decades of the last century.
Where murder is concerned, a conviction should never be regarded as too late. An open, unsolved murder case can break a detective, can sour his or her retirement from the force and can cast a long shadow over their entire career; it can leave families and friends of the victim in a state of permanent stasis, never able to put the loss behind them and at least mentally move on; it can fascinate those who write about crime, leading to speculation, additional investigation and amateur detective work. Jack the Ripper committed all his murders as far back as 1888, yet over 125-years later, his identity is still debated over and the list of potential suspects is added to with every new book or documentary to cover the grisly story. Naturally, nobody can be convicted for that particular series of murders now, but that doesn’t stop the naming of names and occasionally pinning the tail on a random Victorian donkey.
However, gradual advances in forensic science have at least enabled serious crimes that have taken place in the last half-century to be solved and lingering questions to be resolved. For years, doubts hovered over the guilt of James Hanratty, the ‘A6 Murderer’, who was hanged in 1962 for the murder of Michael Gregsten, an incident that also saw the rape and attempted murder of Gregsten’s mistress, Valerie Storie, after what must have been the first recorded ‘car-jack’. Following Hanratty’s execution – one of the last to take place in this country – a campaign to prove Hanratty’s innocence was a cause celebre for several decades and arguments over whether or not the wrong man had been hanged continued to rage until 2002, when a DNA test finally confirmed Hanratty’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt, according to the Court of Appeal. At the same time, numerous unsound convictions have been quashed and various guilty parties have been convicted decades after a crime has been committed. In this respect, too late is never too late when it comes to murder. It always has been, and always should be, top of the criminal pops.
Few would really claim there is no justification for investigating a cold case when that case is murder, especially when the science that didn’t exist then can be used now to release an innocent man and sentence a guilty one. But what of allegations of sexual assault made thirty, forty or even fifty years after the alleged event – cases that were never even lukewarm in the first place, let alone cold, cases where it is one person’s word against another and actual evidence is more or less dismissed as irrelevant?
I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores of the motivations behind the current craze for tracking down ‘historical abusers’ (though that tag could technically be applied to someone like George I, who imprisoned his wife for the last thirty years of her life); this has been covered many times before on many blogs and by people who are far more learned and expert on the subject than I. Where this particular crime is concerned, I just wonder how, when a conviction or pardon for a historical murder is utterly dependent on freshly uncovered evidence verified by the most sophisticated of techniques that more or less eradicates all doubt, a historical sex crime can be investigated and brought to court before a jury and result in sentencing without any of the methods that are applied to establishing the identity of a killer. If enough ‘victims come forward’, no matter how shaky and implausible their accounts of their alleged assaults may be – and I’m not claiming that every alleged assault accusation is the product of a delusional fantasist or the avaricious invention of a corrupt law firm – chances are the accused will be found guilty of at least one assault.
Being found guilty of viciously hacking a schoolgirl to death means Colin Ash-Smith will probably receive a life sentence today; if we call life twenty-five years, that’s the same as Ray Teret received yesterday. I haven’t studied the Teret case closely enough to pass judgement on whether or not the accusations of which he’s been convicted all stand up or whether the evidence supporting them was as flimsy and questionable as that which sentenced, say, Rolf Harris; but one cannot elevate the crime of historical abuse to the same level as – or even above – murder, and then not apply the same thorough process to establish indisputable proof beyond all reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty, as one would apply in the case of murder. Rather, the convictions of those found guilty of historical abuse all-too often appear to be based less on actual evidence – clearly the most important factor in any conviction – than the comparison of contemporary social mores with those of the recent past; and that cannot surely be the basis upon which a man is handed a sentence that will more or less ensure he dies behind bars.
If Ray Teret or Rolf Harris or Max Clifford or Stuart Hall are all genuinely guilty of the crimes that sent them to prison, then their sentences were deserved and they are rightly paying the price for those crimes. But if there is doubt, if their arrest, charge, trial, conviction and sentencing were based on accusations that could not or cannot be substantiated in the way that a murder conviction simply has to be, then their crimes are nowhere near on a par with murder and they should never have been sent down.
*STOP PRESS: Just heard Colin Ash-Smith has received a twenty-one-year sentence, which means what he did warrants a sentence four years shorter than the one Ray Teret received. Make of that what you will.*
Petunia Winegum
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December 12, 2014 at 10:35 am -
I agree with every word that you say about murderers, but am concerned about the way that some of these alleged historic sex-abuse crimes are being pursued.
Standards have changed; when I first went out to work, nobody would see anything wrong with, say, a man putting his arm around the shoulders of a girl sitting at her desk and giving her a quick squeeze, these days it would be sexual harassment.
I’m also concerned about the number of other “victims” who suddenly pop up saying “yes, me too” when an allegation is made. Why didn’t they come forward before? The arguments that no-one would take any notice or they were scared simply doesn’t wash in many cases. They can get away with it because they can claim that they can’t remember the exact date and time as it was so many years ago, and any in-depth questioning meets with a similar answer.
Whilst justice needs to be done, I’d be far happier if I thought that this year’s events weren’t being neglected in favour of the past; happier if the police pursued with more vigour all the recent child grooming and abuse in places like Rotherham, Luton, and now even Oxford.-
December 12, 2014 at 10:50 am -
I recall that “Please Sir” had John Alderton’s teacher constantly beating away the amorous advances of his mini-skirted “schoolgirls”. You’d expect to see the opposite if the kultur has been as currently represented. There’s someone here who is furious with the judge’s commentary, but not for any reasons to do with disputed allegations about something unknown in the past. It’s a tad emotional but such are the times.
https://www.facebook.com/lizzie.cornish/posts/10152655138268022-
December 12, 2014 at 11:43 am -
I bet Sting wouldn’t pass muster today. Who knows, might he even be able to be prosecuted for it when everything goes back from the future and Every Little Thing She Does becomes no longer Magic?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Stand_So_Close_to_Me
I should love to think that the irony in this part of the article was intended!
‘Before joining The Police, Sting had previously worked as an English teacher. Sting said of the song in 1981:
I wanted to write a song about sexuality in the classroom’-
December 12, 2014 at 11:45 am -
And if you want to risk being tracked returning to your youth again
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December 12, 2014 at 11:50 am -
The birds of prey are circling Tom Jones by the looks of things.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-30432645-
December 12, 2014 at 11:53 am -
I didn’t think they had birds in Wales. Just sheep.
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December 12, 2014 at 12:22 pm -
You can leave your fleece on…
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December 12, 2014 at 12:15 pm -
Wonder how much compo Delilah will get ?
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December 12, 2014 at 3:59 pm -
Ye gods, at least use a proper source: http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1220
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December 12, 2014 at 11:04 am -
I completely agree
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December 18, 2014 at 1:50 pm -
“I’m also concerned about the number of other “victims” who suddenly pop up saying “yes, me too” when an allegation is made. Why didn’t they come forward before? The arguments that no-one would take any notice or they were scared simply doesn’t wash in many cases. “
I agree. Another argument they often seem to put forward is that they didn’t think they’d be believed. That could clearly work as an excuse for anyone who knew they weren’t telling the truth.
There’s a definite “trying hard to convince” feeling coming from some of the alleged victims speaking to the media. Lives destroyed, tears, wailing faces. Holocaust survivors seem much more composed.
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December 12, 2014 at 11:00 am -
“his identity is still debated over ”
No it isn’t. Jimmy Savile’s maternal line was ‘Kelly’ !
There was even a ditty at the time:
“I’m not a butcher, not a Yid nor yet a foreign skipper but I’m your own true lovin’ friend, your’s truly Jim The Fixer-‘ows about that then”
*Hums* Oh tie a tinfoil ribbon round an ol Yew Tree, it’s been 125 years…
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December 12, 2014 at 11:30 am -
Stitched up like a kipper
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December 13, 2014 at 7:00 am -
The headline story in the ‘Mail’ today is intriguing for all the wrong reasons:
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December 12, 2014 at 11:32 am -
But what else do you expect, when it would appear that large parts of the present generation that is doing this seem to subscribe to the notion that justice may indeed be quite rightly dispensed by what Mrs Dromey descroibed as ‘The Court of Public Opinion’.
Increasingly, it seems to be acceptable to have laws being created, to cover what is being treated as ‘societal wrongdoing’, where the offence is one of a subjective nature, and defined by morally descriptive language, as opposed to objective fact. I would venture that most of the public are probably blissfully ignorant of the potential impact of these, and the consequences, as both intended and, on occasion, unintended.
However every single issue pressure group, as aided and abetted by the mass media and those who, for whatever reason make a career in pursuing such matters, both in some sort of official capacity, or merely as opportunistic hangers on, those people are well aware of this. As well as how to use it to further their own aims, and have led our spineless politicians down this path by the nose.
So why should we even begin to consider, or hope, that the average 12 punters, dragged from the massed hordes of those immersed in a public pool of ignorance and prejudice, are going to somehow be transformed, at the point they take their place on the jury bench, into those who can incisively compartmentalise, and properly divide between, those delineations that might fairly and reasonably be made in principle between past and present public mores, fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, truth and error, and impartiality and prejudice?
Like Niemöller, most people they will only ‘get it’ when finally someone comes for them.
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December 12, 2014 at 11:55 am -
Charles Starkweather might qualify as a carjacker, a guy, just a kid in fact, who made Hanratty look like Bruce Forsyth, talking of which, he is about the only ageing celebrity who hasn’t yet been accused of some sort of sexual indiscretion. Yet!
I haven’t looked at the Teret case but I saw that woman who claimed he raped her when she was 12. In the 1960s, a 12 year old girl was visibly a child. Heck, when I was 14 I wasn’t interested in 12 year olds, the gap was that great. I wonder if there was any proper evidence that Teret ever had sex with her or any of the others, certainly at that age. It seems to me the real purpose of that trial was to convict Savile by proxy.
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December 12, 2014 at 12:13 pm -
Savile seemed to be found not guilty as it happens insofar as one of the many not guilty verdicts Teret got was the one for “aiding and abetting” Savile to rape. That Teret was then found guilty of raping the self-same person suggests therefore that Jimmy was innocent since otherwise Teret’s not guilty on the other count makes little sense. That’s my legal interpretation anyhow…..
I’ve yet to properly pin down the full list of Teret’s charge/verdict table. Initial analysis seemed to suggest he was found not guilty of around 60% of the charges against him, although you’d be hard-pressed to gather that impression from the massed media. But I keep finding different versions of what he was charged with. The press reported he was convicted of 7 out of 18 rapes, which was what I based my initial calculation on, but the judges’ sentencing remarks suggest there were 35 charges in total.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pakkLI6gfD4/VImyL6zRZ6I/AAAAAAAAEF0/6WWBwM8jyDw/s1600/Teret35Counts.PNG
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December 12, 2014 at 12:15 pm -
“Rather, the convictions of those found guilty of historical abuse all-too often appear to be based less on actual evidence – clearly the most important factor in any conviction – than the comparison of contemporary social mores with those of the recent past; and that cannot surely be the basis upon which a man is handed a sentence that will more or less ensure he dies behind bars.”
If true and it may well be, it is probably the most damning indictment on our Jury trial system amongst the many available.
There are very few people whom I have known or do still know, who I would want to be sitting in judgment of me, or facts presented in any case against me or in support of me. Those who could not differentiate between subjective and objective, or who could not assess the assessor let alone understand the need to do so. Those who believed with certainty they could tell when a person was telling the truth or not. The list goes on.
The system is supposed to be made effective under the guidance and control of a professional, the Judge with the assistance of ‘expert witnesses’. But some of them are amongst those I catagorise in the above paragraph.
There lies the problem, regardless of the alleged quality of the physical evidence it will always be impacted, beneficially or not, by human content. That is where the weak point will be at risk of achieving supremacy. Thus evidence which is devoid of the physical and wholly made up of circumstance and eyewitness is the most prone to weakness. I’d argue therefore that in those cases the test of ‘so as you are sure’ could not be properly or objectively met and since the lesser test of ‘balance of probabilities’ was not intended for the criminal court, the cases should probably never have made the criminal court.
That they did does appear to be in support of your contention that they do because of “.. the comparison of contemporary social mores with those of the recent past…”
If this is also true then the moving of decisions about who is and isn’t prosecuted from solicitors employed by police, to the allegedly politically independent CPS, hasn’t delivered.
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December 12, 2014 at 12:41 pm -
* the allegedly politically independent CPS, hasn’t delivered *
It delivered a gong for human rights activist Keir Starmer and that’s all that really matters.
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December 12, 2014 at 12:25 pm -
Applying future advances in detection technology can produce interesting results.
The infamous Dr Crippen went to the gallows for the apparent murder of his wife, after human remains were found under a cellar floor at the marital home. Recent DNA testing of those remains (which were retained for some reason) has etablished that they were of a male who had no genetic link to the late Mrs Crippen.
That’s not to say that he didn’t kill his wife, but her body has never been located – he swung for someone completely different, whom he may or may not have killed.
There doesn’t seem to be any high-profile campaign running to clear Crippen’s name yet – maybe he knew Jimmy Savile……. -
December 12, 2014 at 12:27 pm -
. Teret is standing proxy for Savile daring to depart his shrivelled frame before he could be ‘burnt’ as a sort of a witch representing current perceptions of past behaviour. He is also a proxy for all the failed attempts to nobble the oldies pronounced not guilty. The rape laws have been tweaked to include actions that were not ‘rape’. Too ‘naughty but nice’ for me to relate. Lawyers allegedly bend ears with these additions to the crime of ‘rape’ when interviewing clients. Their testimonies can be skewed then to include these common ‘behind the church hall after the local hop ‘pleasurable activities’ in their statements. What used to be done instead of full intercourse, which protected a girl from illegitimate pregnancy, but not human papilloma virus, is now classed as rape!
I read the murder that Mr Whicher tried to solve. He had the right suspect in his sights but was ignored. A child who murdered a child due to jealousy and anger at her father’s affair with a nursery maid, who became her stepmother. Whicher was pilloried by the media of the day, as usual. He had a nervous collapse and retired from the police. The child murderer later went to prison for a long time. After release wrote a book to tell her story of why she did the killing of her baby half sister. She lived to a very old age. Was able to write about and publish what was probably true. Perhaps this current spate of elder accusations are to cull society of a lot of elders who are now so dangerous, they should be banged up till they die, or shrivel up to a helpless shell, like the trian robber. Their wealth, if any, can be picked over to fund a few face lifts, Seychelles holidays and a house upgrade, if they hit the jackpot. Right on Gals!!!
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December 13, 2014 at 12:07 pm -
Indeed the renowned Liz Dux of $later & Gordon has said as much :”the nearest we can get to prosecuting Jimmy Savile”. If that does not ring alarm bells, the concept that someone can now be convicted almost by proxy for anothers crimes. real or imagined then society really is in trouble.
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December 12, 2014 at 12:43 pm -
Is it too late to convict Lizzie Borden?
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December 12, 2014 at 12:59 pm -
“Is it too late to convict Lizzie Borden?”
That would be victim blaming. Obviously she was ABUSED by her father.
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December 12, 2014 at 1:09 pm -
On the ball, as usual. Just one comment about the Hanratty case, though. I wonder whether this case will re-emerge when doubts grow about DNA as the magic bullet of forensic science. Some slight doubts have already been expressed. My understanding is that the exhibits in the Hanratty case were thrown in a box together, with nobody ever anticipating the development of DNA analysis, and there is some possibility of contamination by his clothing coming in contact with Valerie Storey’s. Not my field of expertise, and I’m ready to be corrected….
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December 12, 2014 at 3:08 pm -
For myself, Paul Foot was in error in continuing to pursue the Hanratty issue after the appeal court judgement. From what I have read (albeit just recent Googling), only Hanratty’s or intimate others DNA was found on evidence. There is no way to account for Hanratty being innocent other than active fraud by the forensic scientists involved. To my knowledge, that has never been suggested.
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December 12, 2014 at 3:24 pm -
Paul Foot is a throwback to the days when leftie journalistic thinking was that you were innocent no matter what the evidence because the law was run by political-rightists. Nowadays they prefer you’re guilty and bugger the evidence, because the law is run by human-rightists.
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December 19, 2014 at 1:41 pm -
In fact, the dna evidence that implicated Hanratty would not, could not, be used in a law court.
Todays criminal evidence requires a total separation between evidencial material from both victim and accused. That simply was not the case with evidence in the Hanratty case, where it was all bagged together.
If tried today, on DNA evidence only, he would walk free.
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December 12, 2014 at 4:05 pm -
The case against Hanratty was a lot stronger than was believed, even without the DNA.
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December 12, 2014 at 2:28 pm -
If only those complainants had the foresight of Monica Lewinsky, and preserved items of clothing …………….
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/clinton/dnareport.jpg
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December 12, 2014 at 3:27 pm -
Clearly a slut of the old school (in her laundry habits).
slut (n.) Look up slut at Dictionary.com
c.1400, “a dirty, slovenly, or untidy woman,” according to OED “Of doubtful origin,” but probably cognate with dialectal German Schlutt “slovenly woman,”
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December 12, 2014 at 3:46 pm -
Weird how the police haven’t done anything about Bill Wyman & Mandy Smith, as she was only 13 when he started fooling around with her.
I think a lot of police time is wasted on these historic crimes and no interest would be taken in investigating other historic crimes of a non sexual nature. What’s so special about sex, it’s how we all got here. So much money is being spent on this aided and abetted by compo lawyers .-
December 12, 2014 at 4:50 pm -
Completely agree.
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December 12, 2014 at 5:53 pm -
Two reasons why (and they apply across the board to many other ‘name’ rock stars):
1) There is no complainant.
2) Though the anti-male ideology of this witch-hunt applies to all men, the bedrock of society is now the big multi-nationals. Rock music is one of the few “industries” that no longer need much upkeep – repackage the old, merchandise, image rights, royalties etc. A veritable money tree in times of rock-bottom austerity, and will be for years to come. So there is no ‘corporate approval’ to damage Brand Stones (who, you may or may not know) wrote many a paean to underage and/or lascivious sex, of the type that make Blurred Lines look like Two Little Dickie Birds) – and you best believe everyone from the media to the police to the judicial system to the politicians are owned wholesale by Big Business.
In music they only make small-fry sacrifices – a hammy Gary Glitter here, an anti-establishment Roy Harper there…-
December 12, 2014 at 8:58 pm -
That’s probably what I thought! The Stones are too big to fall. Probably the same for Michael Jackson. The police wouldn’t however necessarily need a complaint too act especially in such a mine field as under age sex. Of course if Mandy Smith started to sing Wyman would be off quicker than jumpin jack flash
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December 13, 2014 at 12:12 pm -
Big difference with Michael Jackson is that US courts have not yet succumbed to this appalling concept of same fact evidence and things like exact dates are still crucial evidence rather than recent UK cases were shifting dates & ages are of no consequence (and how can anyone win when the goal posts can be shifted mid- trial?)
But they seem to be changing all that with Bill Cosby.
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December 12, 2014 at 10:07 pm -
There are so many issues here that are making me angry, frustrated and despondent. A lot of them have been highlghted in Putunia’s blog and the comments. What is the purpose of sentencing someone to so long in jail? It seems to be purely retribution. There is no longer any talk (as there sometimes was in the ‘benighted’ 60s and 70s) of being able to reform criminals, let alone trying to understand why people act in ways that hurt others and trying to find ways to prevent it that do not involve simply locking them up. There is an acceptance everywhere that we can divide people into the right-minded and the evil, and an almost 18th-century belief that by finding and locking up all the evil ones our problems will be solved. My great-uncle, a prison governor, always said, “There but for the grace of God…”. Instead there is a kind of macho competition among judiciary and public of ‘who can give the longest…’. 25 years for acts that do not even have to be proven with evidence, and a baying crowd clapping in the gallery that reminded me of scenes at Tyburn, 22 years for a doctor who was aroused by his young, sick patients. We can condemn the actions, but we should also consider the purpose and nature of punishment. But let us also, in a time when the word ‘survivor’ has been appropriated to quite a different meaning, compare these sentences with those given to the doctors in Nazi concentration camps who carried out experiments, some of them truly horrific, on inmates. Those who were not in the SS were finally given maximum sentences of 20 years. A man responsible for the deportation of thousands of French Jews to the death camps got 11 years, I’m very glad that there are people prepared to speak out on this blog and question what is going on, but where are all the rest of the thinking people in the country? It’s a devastating indictment on our lack of education and insularity that we can fall victim to a modern witchcraft hysteria and for all our admiration for people like Gandhi, Mandela and King, still believe that an eye for an eye and revenge ‘justice’ will make the world a better place.
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December 13, 2014 at 5:02 am -
Very cool MM.
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December 13, 2014 at 5:34 am -
“What is the purpose of sentencing someone to so long in jail? It seems to be purely retribution.”
Given we have been told repeatedly for the last 40 years to my personal knowledge that the prisons are overcrowded I suspect little meaningful ‘rehabilitation’ has been attempted in any of them. No doubt giving rise to the *prison doesn’t work* mantra. But if you asked a victim of a repeat offender recently released from imprisonment, you’d be more likely to hear *release from prison doesn’t work*.
The problem is and always has been the requirement for a one size fits all solution at the minimum headline cost in pound notes, which must also be available to be knocked backed and forth from one extreme to the other to satisfy the current political dogma, whichever is in temporary ascendancy.
I’m no fluffy, as far as I am concerned as long as any individual has been made aware of the likely consequences of breaking the law, which should apply to every single second time offender (except those who are mentally ill, who require special attention) I don’t want that persons well being to be the most important consideration. Neither do I want his/her formative experiences to be accepted as an excuse for the lawbreaking. What I do want is the countless numbers who are the future victims to be the first consideration.
By all means take those things into account when deciding sentencing ( like it or not punishment is a necessary element in that ) but on the basis of the “one size fits all” system that continues to prevail nothing beneficial will come of it. Similarly with the so called ‘care in the community’ approach to mental health, nothing but an excuse to save money dressed up as something else with entirely foreseeable, not to say inevitable consequences, more victims of violent crime.
Added to my earlier point, that it is individual human beings who influence and corrupt any system even good ones, there is little chance of an improvement, but the blanket response of reducing prison sentences isn’t the answer. What would help is if politics and religion were removed from the criminal justice system entirely for a start.
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December 13, 2014 at 9:20 am -
The current prison population is less than a nearly-full Wembley stadium. The numbers of people in society with a criminal record might be a more interesting statistic since with the advances in the ability to monitor people, they can become prisoners within society.
It’s intriguing that Ken Clarke’s demise was intimately involved with his comments about “different sorts of rape”. Back in 2012 he was bleating about prisons being a waste of time and money.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8455298/Kenneth-Clarke-prison-is-a-waste-of-taxpayers-money.html-
December 13, 2014 at 9:57 am -
“Back in 2012 he was bleating about prisons being a waste of time and money.”
Which is my point about politicians being involved. He said:
“It is just very, very bad value for taxpayers’ money to keep banging them up and warehousing them in overcrowded prisons where most of them get toughened up.”
Exactly right but it shouldn’t be an excuse for spouting the old mantra “prison doesn’t work”. It is his and other politicians fault that prison doesn’t work and the answer is to make it more effective not throw open the cell doors. It might be more expensive initially but if successful would save money over time. If not, tough, lock ‘em up anyway.
“I want them to be more punitive, effective and organised,” he told The Times. “Unpaid work should require offenders to work at a proper pace in a disciplined manner rather than youths just hanging around doing odd bits tidying up derelict sites.”
And just how does he imagine this can be achieved? How will the convicted criminals who cannot be controlled or improved in a secure environment like prison, where discipline is supposed to be enforceable but isn’t, be controlled outside that secure environment? Now if he really wanted to improve the effectiveness of the system instead of spouting liberal headline grabbing drivel, he could have said that carefully selected inmates who co-operated entirely could benefit from such schemes. He didn’t say it because his true objective is otherwise.
Clarke was an arrogant twerp because he genuinely didn’t give a toss for anyone’s opinion but his own, that he survived long enough to be considered a *big beast* of the Conservative party is testament to the rottenness of the rest of his ilk in the HoC.
But in fact who cares what they say anyway, it’s what they do that counts and in relation to the CJS I haven’t seen anything good done for as long as I can remember.
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December 13, 2014 at 10:36 am -
Arrogant…. Out of touch…..
It strikes me that the political bubble had long become subject to the media bubble. How do we (the politicians) “know what the people want”? The media tells us they want, and so the politicians become prey for all the lobbyists who willingly tell them what the silent majority wants, even though the majority is silent.
Twitter and the internet is perceieved as a soultion because suddenly the silent majority can give themselves a voice, except ‘normal’, ‘average’ people donlt go on twitter and donlt blog and believe the internet is just a waste of time and full of paedophile predators…
And so the bubble changes but remains a bubble. The people are always allowing the lunatics to run the asylum because they have better things to do, like watching TV or shopping, or going on holiday.
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December 13, 2014 at 12:15 pm -
Indeed Albert Speer only got 20 years for participating in the rape of Europe and killing of 11 million Soviets plus a million Allied soldiers.
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December 13, 2014 at 9:52 am -
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/teret-ray-others-sentencing-remarks.pdf
The judge’s sentencing remarks have been published in full.
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December 13, 2014 at 10:56 am -
A 25 year sentence is in reality 12 and a half years minimum because of the automatic discounting.
A life sentence with a 22 year tariff is a 22 year minimum sentence.
So it’s not correct to say that Ash-Smith received a shorter sentence. Properly understood it is almost twice as long – because Ray Terret’s real sentence is only half the headline figure.
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December 13, 2014 at 11:15 am -
Mr Clarke was partially right. Prison should be limited to those who have murdered or very violent. Perhaps redirected large sums of money or dealt in class 1 drugs on a large scale. Lesser offenders could be securely tagged and subjected to publicity similar to that served up to suspected child molesters while on prolonged bail. The level of this intrusion should be dictated by the crime done and proved guilty. Securely tagged. Ugly pictures published frequently. Photographers on their heels. Biographies of their lives…warts and all published. This is for recent crime not half a century ago. (Proved recent child molesters too) especially the molesters . Then perhaps they will all think twice before they next break the law, if they know this will be on a special electronic notice board and the internet too at regular intervals for a specified time. False beards, wigs and makeover people should prosper! After all that is what has been done to several minor elderly celebs, who have not even gone to trial…so far.
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December 13, 2014 at 5:35 pm -
Anybody remember the controversy over Jerry Lee Lewis and Myra, his 13-year old wife? I do and I went digging around on the internet for more information.
At the time – the 50s – the legal age of marriage in Alabama was 14. But that limit could be ignored if the bride-to-be was pregnant; there was also no obligation to furnish proof of age (which was apparently how Myra Gale Brown became Mrs Lewis – she told everyone she was 15; Jerry, incidentally, was 22 at the time). So girls as young as twelve were regularly married off. The reason for such an early age limit was practical – you can’t stop teenagers from having sex, so get them married and turn them into responsible adults! This thinking of course goes right against the present idea that young teenage girls are delicate little flowers who can never consent to sex, especially with an older man.
Lewis’ marriage to Myra was, by the way, his third. His first marriage to a 17-year old – when he was a tender 14! I’ve found an interview with Myra; she doesn’t sound in the least bit traumatised.
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