Nothing he can do after eleven years of NL government is going to make a jot of difference. Nor do I expect him to take any responsibility for forcing more and more parents out to work through his tax and benefits changes rather than bringing up their children.
But to answer your question, he thinks we are all so stupid we may believe he really can do something. After all, part of the politician's mindset is to assume the public are utterly stupid.
Easy, have a mandatory prison (yes that word AGAIN) for anyone caught with a knife for the second time.
Of course the liberal elite are going to bring up examples of tradesmen and fishermen.
However the law clearly allows for these reasons with the statutory defences and wouldn’t get past the CPS in the first place.
Community punishment (or whatever it is called this week!) doesn't work and people are dying as a result.
On the grounds that:
Deterrence = Likely sentence X Probability of being arrested, charged and found guilty in court
What he should do is:
1. Introduce a minimum sentence of two years (no early release) for having a knife in public without lawful excuse
2. Send police out with handheld metal detectors, handcuffs and prison vans to round up knife carriers. They are to stop those likely to be carrying knives i.e. no requirement to search little old ladies for demographic statistical purposes
3. Publicise the number of knife carriers imprisoned on a weekly basis, to get the message through that knife carriers will be causght and will be in prison until at least 2010.
4. If prison places are an issue, simply put bunk beds in cells. If knife carriers don't like sharing a prison cell, they should leave their knives at home.
Do you really think they don't have bunk beds in cells already?
There is nothing he could do to help except rushing through some legislation allowing the police to search anyone in a public place for no reason at all. Then trust us to get on with the job. Leave sentencing discretion with the courts as well. They can generally tell the difference between an errant forgetful boy scout and a dead eyed rat child and act accordingly
If y'alls want this sorting out quickly, y'alls got no chance. It involves turning round a sizable chunk of a generation that have had a messed up raising. There is no quick fix and what fixing there is to be had is going to cost a lot.
Richard75,
Then sleep them at the same density as submarine crews. If people don't want to sleep six to a cell for two years, they can simply leave the knife at home.
"My client tells me that he will be starting a new job on Monday of next week, your Worships. He is determined to make a go of his new life and asks you to give him just one more chance to prove it."
How often have we heard these words but this time the advocate is talking about the PM!
Yes, there is no quick fix and it would take at least a generation to do it but Gordon is`nt interested in anything beyond the next election so stand by for the usual load of gonads.
"crisis"? The word has been completely devalued.
5000 quid a year, you lose half on your first conviction, the other half on your second.
Go 3 years without conviction, get your money restored. Pass at least 10 GCSEs with 5 Bs or more, get it restored. Pass AS levels, get it restored (Or get a bonus).
Anything else isn't going to make a difference, and Brown isn't going to commit that kind of money.
After Labour was slaughtered at two by-elections, it's easy to see they they didn't participate in last weeks unnecessary vote.
Politicians have no sense of honour. They crave power. If they really did have the advancement of this country as their #1 priority, they would all resign and allow a coalition government to tackle this mess.
This story says it all:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/75.../uk/
7503110.stm
Metal detectors? Stop-and-search-for-no-reason? Dear, dear. Where have you all been?
Fibreglass / carbon fibre / plastic resin / ceramic "stabbers" are readily available if you want to look hard enough. There'll be lots more of them about if the police spend all their time running metal detectors over the yoof of the land.
Stop and search fails because the majority of this crime is committed in, shall we say, ethnic groups. The minute the Police start targeting ethnic groups for stop and search, we step back a couple of decades to Brixton and Bristol and Toxteth and this time we've got Muslim and Asian groups sounding off about victimisation as well. Scarman legitimised violent riot as a tool of protest in the 80's; how much worse would it be now?
Not to mention that in "sus" laws we have another set of regulations intended to do one thing, but which will inevitably suffer "mission creep" and be used for other purposes entirely over the coming years as expediency, targets and incentives grind down the vestigial remains of principles (Peelian and otherwise) in the Police force.
Perhaps it's time to get very, very politically incorrect. To have an honest dialogue about which groups of people it is primarily involved in knife crime. To be prepared to withdraw benefits completely; no excuses, no exception. To be prepared to reintroduce corporal punishment and a new type of legal process involving a type of conviction which, for offenders convicted under the age of say 23 is non-disclosable, avoiding tainting their employability if they straighten themselves out.
In other words, apply the birch with a will and repeat as necessary, for as long as necessary, up until the age of 23. But leave their convictions record clean as far as an employer is concerned. After 23, deal with it in the adult system.
We knew that he thinks we are all stupid, and that he holds us all in total contempt, when he stood up and said that there had been no deal with the DUP MPs over 42 days.
Jobrag
Whatever he does, he thinks we're stupid.
Moreover, "tackling knife crime" is like trying to deal with one spot in a serious case of chicken pox.
I have recently returned from a tour of Europe. I found that in many countries, there was an amazing variety of knives on display in shop windows. Why do they not have a "knife crisis"?
As a Boy Scout I regularly carried a sheath knife on my belt (as did most others). However, I never saw or heard of somebody who had been stabbed, until I went to Africa on National Service. There, an African had been stabbed by another from a different tribe, and for the first time I needed to use my Field First-aid pack.
Could it be that the "crisis" has been imported into the country by a different ethnic group?
No, philjrob, it is just that the knife is the current weapon of choice. In the past we have had razor gangs, particularly in Glasgow, and weapons have included coshes and bicycle chains.
Until the criminal justice system does its job properly and makes people pay for their actions nothing will change.
Who do you think these kids see as role models?
www.youtube.com/nrthldn
tribute video to MARTIN DINNEGAN 14 who was chased,beaten and stabbed to death by 4 youths.
justice has still not been served,only one of the 4 youths was charged with his murder,3 others were cleared of ALL charges......
until the pathetic excuse for a 'justice' system starts punishing these animals,it wont stop
I've said it on previous threads but the courts have failed to realise that Parliament increased the maximum penalty for possession of a blade. They continued as if the offence were just as originally enacted (summary only). First it was made either-way and later the penalties were increased. Also, possession on school premises became a specific offence.
Possession of knives when committing other either-way offences should have also made magistrates think about declining jurisdiction.
Sentencing is not the total answer to these problems but the courts have their part to play. Also, the latest magistrates' court guidelines (4th August 200
do not help. There is to be a government announcement on Monday.
I agree with Peter that the courts can't solve the problem, but we can at least put one more piece into the jigsaw. I have dealt with several weapon cases since the CoA judgment and my colleagues have been with me in upping the ante.
The announcement on Monday will solve nothing. The blade issue is a deep cultural question. Youth culture has always been impenetrable, never more so than now, and court sentences that nobody sees himself getting and political exhortations are unlikely to change attitudes. It will be a long haul.
What do people think to this article,
http://www.eadt.co.uk/content/ea...3A09%3A11%
3A833
A 17 year old youth, caught with a knife, sentenced to 4 month DTO - but reduced on appeal to a community order because of the "media frenzy" - what a great ground for appeal!
In my mind, the 4 month sentence was entirely appropriate. I can certainly see why at times the public think the judiciary are out of touch... Has the Crown Court judge and his two magistrate colleagues not read the recent Court of Appeal judgment?
Bystander said: "court sentences that nobody sees himself getting". An excellent point Bystander, well made. The judiciary really ought to make sure that knife carriers do start getting serious sentences.
Q. Of the 47,338 people convicted of knife carrying over the last ten years, how many were given a sentence of two years?
A. Nine
Now, if the answer had been rather closer to 47,338, and rather further away from zero, perhaps we wouldn't have Bystander's correctly identified problem of "court sentences that nobody sees himself getting".
And if anyone is worried about prison places, apart from the obvious (build more prisons), please refer to my earlier posts.
"In my mind, the 4 month sentence was entirely appropriate. I can certainly see why at times the public think the judiciary are out of touch... Has the Crown Court judge and his two magistrate colleagues not read the recent Court of Appeal judgment?"
We magistrates must take a stand against the (sometimes)ridiculous views of judges at the Crown Court. How this appeal was ever allowed I don't know. Remember magistrates - there are three votes on appeals so don't get beaten up by the judge!
"I can certainly see why at times the public think the judiciary are out of touch..."
The difference is that while the public free to believe whatever nonsense they choose (e.g. "knife crime is a Terrible Crisis", rather than "knife crime is statistically not worth worrying about"), one would expect the judiciary to have a greater grasp of the facts. It would be nice to believe that they do at present, although our gracious host's use of the word "crisis" rather than, say, "teacup-storm" isn't particularly reassuring...
Some one must be stupid. Who voted this bunch of incompetents into power? Nothing to do with me Guv!
It's OK, the Home Secretary has a solution to will solve everything:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/75.../uk/
7503845.stm
The scheme is to be called 'Deus Ex Machina'.
We don't have a problem with "knife crime". Knives don't commit crimes.
The problem that we actually have is one of gangs of criminal youths. The problem is not knives - magically take all the knives away, and we'll have a "baseball bat crime" problem, a "razor crime" problem or something.
Getting rid of all the knives (or guns or whatever) won't magically turn these young people into law-abiding citizens.
The law no longer has any respect. What used to be an instrument of justice applied with some common sense seems to have turned into an exercise in box ticking. The reason that feral youths taunt teachers, shopkeepers and the like with "you can't touch me - it's child abuse" is that the police are quick to arrest any adult involved in an altercation with a child, whilst mollycoddling the child. "You can't touch me - I can do what the fuck I like" is learned behaviour. If we want to solve the "knife crime" problem, we need to stop worrying about knives and concentrate on not teaching our children to be criminals.
Do our neigbours France, Germany and Spain have similar problems with young people? Does America have similar problems? Might the differences and similarities in social and economic structure lead us to a better answer than 'lock en up'.
@jobsworth - "...there are three votes on appeals so don't get beaten up by the judge!" All very well saying that but (a) the vast majority of magistrates would not say "boo" to a judge and (b) the judge's decision on any point of law is final. It is common on appeals from magistrates to bring in a little point of law so that the judge gets the final say.
YoungJP asks whether the Judge and his two magistrate colleagues had read the latest Court of Appeal judgment. One would hope that the judge was aware of it and it is incumbent on counsel for the prosecution to bring it to the attention of the court. Please remember that magistrates are not actually expected to have read any law at all. They take their law from their legal adviser or from the judge in the Crown Court.
Peter Hargreaves - In fact my experience is that Crown Court Judges are nowadays much more ready to listen to magistrates' opinions than they may have been a few years ago, and they do not impose their views on us. Having sat a few times with High Court Judges, I have found that they are even more ready to listen, as the offences of which the appellants have been convicted are even further from their day to day experience than that of Crown Court Judges.
I'm with Also on this one, although I'm sure there are variations across the land..
And another thing: knife crime's going to be okay now. Kids convicted of carrying are going to be dragged into Intensive Care to see what someone looks like when they have been shanked. According to the Home Sec, that's 'tougher' than a prison sentence.
Yeah. Right.
Its a bit like saying if you get caught drink driving you will have to see road crash victims, better than losing your licence, one in the bag for free then,. Rehabilitation, works every time especially as a deterrant.
Has anyone actually confirmed that there is a 'real' crisis (I do not mean to disparage the grief of the victims)?
I can certainly cast my mind back to times when carrying a Stanley Knife was the 'crisis'. Before that 'flick knives' were going to cause the end of civilization, and before that (in my parents generation) every evil person wielded a cut throat razor.
The only real difference that I can see is that in previous knife panics the blades were used mostly to slash. Rather more stabbing seems to be going on now.
In my view it is not knife crime that is a problem, but the indifference to taking human life. In which case the corrective action should be aimed at bringing back respect for life.
This is a wider issue. People have already touched on some of the possible corrective actions such as discipline in schools, effective social support for orphans, rapid transit through punishments seen as light and on into tough regimes, and the certainty of being caught. Oh, and a 'broken home', poverty, celebrity, priviledge, drink, or drugs, should not be treated as a viable excuse.
We need to do *all* of these, for a generation, to move to a society where assaulting people is regarded as unacceptable.
Peter said: "All very well saying that but (a) the vast majority of magistrates would not say "boo" to a judge and (b) the judge's decision on any point of law is final. It is common on appeals from magistrates to bring in a little point of law so that the judge gets the final say."
You are correct saying the judge's decision on a point of law is final but we are not talking about fine points of law. We are talking about matters of fact and severety of sentence. I believe I am correct in saying that the appeal in this case was against sentence not against conviction so it was possible for the magistrates to inject some everyday common sense into the discussion with the judge. You are correct in saying many magistrates wouldn't say 'boo' to a judge but there are also others, myself included, who are quite prepared to give as good as they get. We sit in the Crown Court for this very purpose and the sooner we realise we have an equal vote with the judge the better for us all. And in my experience judges mostly respect the views of the magistrates they sit with.
Just how stupid do you think we are?
Stupid enough to vote him into office.
Oh, err, hang on ...?
But carrying a knife is lawful with a "good reason".
Why don't people stoppped with knives just claim to have a good reason? (Without revealing what that reason is, of course.) It must be nearly impossible for a prosecutor to prove that a person doesn't have a good reason - and claiming that anyone who won't reveal their good reason obviously doesn't have one violates the presumption of innocence.
Has any JP or Police Officer had this argument tried on them? How did it pan out?
@nationalist. Simply saying 'I have a good reason but I'm not telling you' is no defence I'm afraid. While generally it is the prosecution who has to prove the case beyond all reasonable doubt, the burden reverses in this instance. So it will be up to the defence to prove that he had a lawful excuse to carry the weapon. And a mere statement that he has one without going on to explain what it is won't do him any good at all.
@southlondonjp: What happened to innocent until PROVEN guilty? The "burden reverses" sounds like a fundamental pillar of justice has just been kicked away! Is this reversal of the burden of proof covered in the Act, or was is just invented in court to make it easier to get a conviction?
I would have thought it would be contrary to something fundamental, like the Bill of Rights, or Magna Carta or the ECHR.
Nationalist - you have stated the precise reason why there is a reverse burden of proof on the defendant. Without it a conviction would be practically impossible.
In one sense reverse burdens of proof are the opposite of the basic position in English law which is that the burden is on the prosecution to prove guilt: Woolmington's case. However, there are now many examples where reverse burdens have been approved by the House of Lords - e.g. possession of controlled drug with intent to supply (R v Lambert 2001); drunk in charge of a vehicle (Sheldrake v DPP 2004) etc.
The House of Lords has repeatedly said that reverse burdens do not necessarily infringe Article 6.
Some reverse burdens are said to be "evidential" (i.e. the defendant merely has to provide enough evidence to credibly raise the defence and the prosecution must then disprove it). Other reverse burdens are "persuasive" (i.e. the defendant has to prove the defence on a balance of probabilities).
The principal decision relating to possession of knives is R v Matthews [2003] Crim 813:
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/E...m/2003/
813.html
Thanks for the for link PH. I shall read with interest since you never know, I might want to carry a knife one day.
re the 4 month sentence
Say
a. One assumes the assault he had been subject to was verifiable.
b. Limited previous convictions and no previous custodial sentences.
c. A detailed YOT report dealing with risk analysis of the offender
d. He has spent 1 week in custody waiting for his appeal.
So he does not do the other 7 weeks of his DTO, rather a community order.
We regularly hear about the need for short sharp shocks, with the 1st week in custody always the hardest for all 1st timers. After that they become more used to it and less scared by it.
The government in its wisdom did not allow for short sharp shocks for such offenders when it set up DTO`s, teh minimum sentence being 4 months.
But this way he gets one (by doing a week), and any re-offending or non-compliance means he goes back for longer.
Certainly a brave decision in the current climate but one which does have a rationale to it if people are willing to look past the basic point. (ie offender gets let off).
OK, so parliament has enacted a law [CJA 1988] where the defendant "must prove" he was carring the knife for a good reason so they have violated the presumption of innocence.
It's interesting to note that if the knife is part of a national costume it's OK - the defendant doesn't have to be of that nationality! The knife-carrying classes should probably adopt an appropriate national costume en-masse.
Does anyone know how one obtains the "lawful authority" to carry a knife as mentioned in s.139(4)?
I'm truly and profoundly astounded and horrified at some of the suggestions being put forward.
There seems to be a complete failure to recognize that if the punishment is not appropriate to the crime, then the punishment itself in an injustice.
We do not apply the death penalty to people who break parking laws. Similarly, we do not impose inhumane and deeply unjust treatments on people who - for example - carry a knife, even with intent to use.
We are not sadists.
A very simple solution: legalize guns, permit concealed carrying of guns, make it easy to buy guns, problem solved (it might lead to gun violence problems, but we're just talking about taking care of a stabbing problem here). Then again, he might try cutting taxes, spending and regulation, leading to greater prosperity and reduced crime, but that probably would take too long.
""Young people who carry knives will be made to visit hospitals, or have doctors visiting them... to hear about the graphic impact of knife wounds."
Doctor: "See this slash? If it had been another inch to the right the femoral artery would have been cut and the patient would have bled to death before the ambulance came!"
Young Thug: "How interesting. Another inch, you say...?"
Here's a perspective on the media frenzy
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/44...ing-knife-
crime
Wouldn't automatically removing the anonymity of teenagers (well, minors) convicted of knife offences be of some good?
At least the general public would know that X was likely to be carrying a knife if seen in the street...
Firstly, I would imagine some would seek this notoriety.
Secondly, there would also be those who regretted what had happened and wouldn't repeat it, but now carry the stigma.
Thirdly, there would I imagine also be the "lads" who would hassle anyone pointed out in this way, if they could.
Finally, it defeats the idea that once a punishment had been accepted and has occurred, that the criminal has paid for their act; we would continue to penalise them afterwards.
More generally, I think there is a fine line here between self-defence (which is acceptable) and victimization/revenge upon the criminal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/75.../uk/
7509968.stm
Me, I'm a simple soul! I put it all down to one simple linguistic change: When I was at school, we had Masters and Mistresses, who we were expected to respect and obey. Then, in the name of some obscure egalitarian principle, they were changed into Teachers, who today's kids can ignore.
My (partial) solution? Quadruple the prison education budget, so that every prisoner with suficient intelligence is discharged with an OU BA(Hons) and is able to get and hold down a job, so that he has something at stake which he doesn't want to lose.
Commenting by HaloScan
