ANOTHER
VOICE
Should the problem of sentencing be left to Mum and the Daily Mirror?
AUBERON WAUGH
Last year, for the first time since 1973, the average number of people held in prison after conviction dropped by 400 to 37,900. This figure does not include the 10,700 people held on remand, or in police cells, but their numbers, too, showed a slight drop for the first time in over 15 years. This is the result of a determined and deeply unpopular campaign on the part of the sentencing authorities to reduce numbers of people held in prison, partly by putting less emphasis on custodial sent- ences, partly by passing shorter sentences and increasing remission.
Meanwhile, we learn from the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders that the incidence of suicide in prison has nearly doubled over the past ten years. I am not sure that Nacro's figures quite bear out this claim, but it is plain enough from every source of in- formation on the subject that the prisoner's lot has been getting worse, rather than better, over the years, with overcrowding, understaffing, and shortage of places in mental hospitals for the mentally dis- turbed, aggravated by a refusal by mental hospital staff to take violent criminals.
A new and particularly nasty element in the punishment of offenders is that prisons are now regarded as open fishing grounds for the sneaks and scavengers of the gutter press. Any released criminal can reckon to make a little money selling stories about his fellow convicts still inside. On Sunday the News of the World treated us to photographs of Gerald Ronson and Ernest Saunders — Ronson wiping tables in the prison dining room, Saunders at work in the prison library. I think the Sun pioneered this supplementary punishment by showing us pictures of Lester Piggott in the prison yard. Any day now, I feel the public relations department of the prison service will sell postcards of better-known prisoners slopping out. There is a deep strain of vindictiveness running through the British, which may be all that is left of the sadism which had them lining the road to Tyburn, or the ghoulishness which had them queueing to buy the rope on which a prisoner had been hanged. My own feeling is that it probably has its roots somewhere deep in the class resentments and class terrors which used to be such a disting- uishing characteristic of our society.
Be that as it may, I should be most surprised if the present tiny dip in the prison population continued for long. The Government can close down its surgical wards and leave people with varicose veins and piles to wait ten years for an operation; it can empty its mental hospitals and leave lunatics to lope around on the sands unattended. But if ever it is suspected of encouraging judges to be lenient, it will be done for. The demand for sending people to prison is like the demand for free medicine. There can never be enough prison places to satisfy it or enough staff to administer it. All the Government can do to keep people happy is to pretend to impose huge sentences, while doubling the remission available, and expand what is euphemistically called 'home leave'.
We must all deplore lenient sentences, if our social life is to take us anywhere beyond the caring sorority of Tower Ham- lets. Even in Tower Hamlets I doubt if I could get away with my secret feeling that children are no more to be protected from violence than adults. Any tendency for judges, in the light of the unavailability of prison accommodation, to pass lenient sentences, can be corrected by the new dispensation for the Crown to appeal against them.
Recently we read that the Attorney General, Sir Patrick Mayhew, had ordered a review of the case of a Gloucestershire youth who had received two years after pleading guilty to killing another youth by reckless driving while over the limit and uninsured. The flavour of Sir Patrick's deliberations is perhaps best caught by the Mirror's account of the story: 'MUM WINS NEW TRIAL ON DRINK-DRIVE KILLER: Jailed hit-run man to face top judges.
'Grieving mum Carol Carpenter has won a battle to take her son's drink-drive killer back to court. The Appeal Court is to review the case of James Bain, who was jailed for only Two YEARS after mowing down pedestrian Simon Carpenter. Bain had drunk six pints of lager and a brandy.
'The decision is a victory for Mrs Carpenter and her husband Denis, who have campaigned ceaselessly for Bain's sentence to be increased. She sobbed at her Cheltenham home yesterday: "I'm so pleased — I just hope that justice will be done this time."' I should guess that a majority of my readers will sympathise with Mrs Carpen- ter and reckon that the unfortunate Bain's sentence should indeed be increased, if that is what Mr and Mrs Carpenter want, although I can see nothing admirable in their wanting it. The Attorney General, who is a politician, undoubtedly felt the force of the argument. The Appeal Court hearing, before the Lord Chief Justice and two other High Court judges, was down to start last Monday.
The narrative of events, as it appeared to emerge at the original trial at Gloucester Crown Court in May, was that the de- ceased Simon Carpenter was one of a group of youths who decided to throw stones at the defendant's car as he drove home after celebrating the birth of his baby. On this occasion, Carpenter and his friends had chosen a drunk man to throw stones at. I should have thought that this was by way of being an occupational hazard for stone-throwers. If you throw stones at enough people in cars, you will eventually pick someone who is drunk or in possession of an uncontrollable temper. I do not think we need waste too much sympathy on Simon Carpenter.
Bain, as I say, pleaded guilty and was given two years in prison. If this was America, one might suspect plea- bargaining. On any more serious charge he could have pleaded self-defence, and although he probably would not have got away with it (since the plea of self-defence is qualified by the obligation to retreat, where possible), a sympathetic jury might easily have acquitted him. Few motorists are altogether delighted to find themselves stoned by gangs of youths, and something enormous like 65 per cent of the popula- tion currently hold a driving licence.
In any case, the trial would have taken longer, cluttered up the court, cost much more and just might have resulted in an unsatisfactory jury verdict from the point of view of those who prefer to uphold the existing law. There is no incentive for anyone to plead guilty under any circumst- ance if Mum and her husband Denis, with the enthusiastic support of the Daily Mir- ror, can be granted a replay by the soapy politician in charge. Two years (less remis- sion) seems just about the right sentence, all things considered. It will be interesting to see whether the. Lord Chief Justice, sitting with Mr Justice Nolan and Mr Justice Cox, now decide to uphold the Crown Court, or agree to accept instruc- tions from Mum and the Daily Mirror.
Previous page
