Justice
The wrong message
Rose Galt
The Scottish Review has recently addressed several issues relating to justice and the law, not necessarily, of course, the same thing. The media hysteria surrounding the reporting of the Tommy Sheridan trial, including the unseemly haste in which the BBC produced the 'definitive' documentary, raises many questions, not least the degree to which the ends of justice may be subverted by outside influences.
Equally troubling is the possibility that records of juvenile crimes and misdemeanours or even just questioning by the police or appearances before a panel or hearing can be revealed to a wide range of individuals or organisations many years after the event.
Bearing all that in mind, I hope I am not alone in being appalled at the sentence handed down by Geoffrey Rivlin QC to Edward Woollard, the 18-year-old who threw a fire extinguisher from the roof of the Conservative Party's headquarters in London during the students' protest last November. The learned judge referred to the need to 'give out a message' and called the two years and eight months which Woollard will be required to serve in a young offenders' institution 'a deterrent sentence'. I can just see Admiral Byng swinging from the gibbet on the poop-deck of his ship in one of the 18th century's more obscure wars 'pour encourager les autres'.
What this young man did was stupid, irresponsible and potentially very dangerous indeed, but nobody was actually hurt. He was on his first ever political march demonstration – indeed it was the first time apparently he had been in London without his parents – as one of a bus-load of sixth formers from the south of England. He wore the clothes of a student, not the balaclava disguise of an agitator, and carried no billiard balls (the weapon of choice apparently of said agitators) or other weapons and such was his general naivety that he seemed not to know that the police were filming everything that happened and that therefore he would be easily identified.
Not that the authorities had to undertake the no doubt tedious task of examining CCTV footage because his parents immediately on his return marched him to the nearest police station where he turned himself in. In court he pled guilty and apparently showed and expressed remorse at every turn. Yet this over-excited adolescent, carried away by the mood of near-hysteria all around and with no previous record, finds himself with a 32-month custodial sentence. Think of that from the point of view of an 18-year-old boy: it must be like looking forward to eternity.
Meaningful community service and/or schemes of restorative justice where offenders come face to face with their victims are surely better options in many cases.
Not even the most bleeding-heart of liberals would suggest that Edward Woollard should have been sent home with an admonitory slap on the wrist or even a heavy fine. Despite his remorse and that of his family and the 30 testaments to his good character that were before the court, his was an act of criminal damage which might have had far worse consequences. But I simply cannot see how such a draconian sentence is an appropriate alternative to either of these.
It is a case which ought surely to force us as a society to think very carefully about prison and its role and purpose in the criminal justice system. Kenneth Clarke, the UK justice secretary in the Conservative-led coalition, has had the courage to defy the braying herds of the tabloid press and say bluntly that we lock up far too many people and to little good effect, with reoffending rates as high as 70%.
As a nation we lock up more people than most other European countries. In Denmark the prison population is 64 (per 100,000 population), in Finland 50, in Norway 59 and in the UK 141. We also have higher crime rates by any computation than these countries. When we look at youth detention figures the picture is equally bleak. A report last March by the new Economics Forum (NEF) found that although it costs £140, 000 a year to keep a young person in prison – far more than a place at Eton – a spell inside made it more likely that a young person would reoffend, be unemployed and live in poverty.
There are more imaginative and far less costly ways of both reducing juvenile crime and dealing with offenders. Meaningful community service and/or schemes of restorative justice where offenders come face to face with their victims are surely better options in many cases.
Edward Woollard will live with the consequences of his moment of madness for the rest of his life and would do so even with the kind of determination by the court that I suggest. His tragedy is that a spell in prison is as likely to harden him than make him any more remorseful than he already is. One doubts too that the deterrent element in his sentence will do anything to stop the few real troublemakers.
Of course we need prisons and some people deserve the lengthy sentences they receive. I won't lose a minute's sleep over the decision that Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, will die in prison. I fear that the fate of Edward Woollard will haunt me for a very long time.
Rose Galt is past-president of the Educational Institute
of Scotland
Kenny
The new manager of Liverpool FC depicted here by Bob Smith
