Civil liberties, justice, crime

Police clampdown round Thatcher funeral

The "Defend the Right to Protest" campaign has put out this statement about the police preparations for Margaret Thatcher's funeral on 17 April 2013. www.defendtherighttoprotest.org Alongside the announcement of plans for the funeral of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, police have taken the opportunity to highlight concerns around security and public order. Reports extend far beyond the bounds of reasonableness and proportionality into active scaremongering with threats of pre-arresting members of the public, as was seen ahead of the Royal Wedding in 2011, and police marksmen being...

Top cop says "Thatcher pushed towards police state in miners' strike"

John Stalker, former Deputy Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, wrote in the Daily Mirror of 14 April that "Britain has never been closer to becoming a police state than when Margaret Thatcher was in charge". Stalker writes: "She turned the police into a paramilitary force and put us on to a war footing... "That was never more clear than during the miners' strike in 1984 when I believe Margaret Thatcher took Britain to the brink of becoming a police state. "She decided that 'her' police force was going to keep the miners and pickets under control. It was all about showing who was boss......

The Tories, rape and the criminal justice system

In 2010 the Labour government commissioned Baroness Vivien Stern to oversee a review into how rape complaints are handled by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The review followed the catastrophic failure by police to take complaints against serial sex attacker John Warboys seriously, leaving him free to rape and sexually assault at least 85 women. The review is worth reading because it shows how the “austerity regime” is impeding the possibility of real progress in helping the victims of sexual violence. There is a consensus now (even in government!) that Sexual Assault...

Seventy per cent probation privatisation plan

The government plans to privatise 70% of the entire national probation service by 2015, leaving just “high-risk offender management” to public probation trusts. The proposals are not evidence-based; there is not a single shred of evidence to suggest the service will be more effective with a privatised, payment-by-results system. The probation service has in fact been successful in reducing re-offending rates year on year, so there is simply no reasonable argument to privatise. It’s purely ideological. In my office, many workers of all grades are no longer content with their position within the...

Reporting rape and police lies

“Police Sapphire teams strongly encourage women to drop rape cases... Police failed to believe victims”, reported the BBC news at the end of February. The report was linked to the case of a woman who reported a rape to Southwark police but was encouraged to drop the charges, the man later went on to murder his two children. A truly shocking case, but the many other times rape cases get dropped and police fail to believe victims do not make it into the mainstream news. It is a reality which won’t be unfamiliar to many women who have experienced reporting rape cases to the police, or who have...

Only 15% of rapes are reported

The Home Office statistics bulletin on sexual offending in England and Wales estimates that 2.5% of women and 0.4% of men were the victims of sexual assault in 2011/12, representing around 473,000 adults. The police recorded a total of 53,000 cases of sexual assault over the same period. It is estimated that around 0.5% of women and 0.1% of men were victims of rape or sexual assault by penetration in 2011-12, 85,000 and 12,000 respectively. The total number of “most serious sexual crimes” recorded by the police in the same period was 42,976, less than half. The Home Office bulletin reported...

Private security and the “labour spy”

The private security industry is expanding at an impressive pace. Estimated to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the industry includes vast corporations such as G4S, now the world’s third largest private sector employer, and with a global staff of 657,000. Companies like this may be familiar to British people from large-scale public events like the Olympic Games, but private security is also a profitable industry in war-torn regions like Iraq and Afghanistan, where governments and investors have found it convenient to browse the market to source their heavily armed men. Espionage, too...

No to super prisons!

The Government has confirmed that closure of five more prisons and the partial closures of two more. In their place a proposed “super prison” in London, Wales or the North West will keep 2000 people locked up, with over 3000 staff working there. The closure of these prisons will not mean increased funding for rehabilitation and non-custodial sentences but will see a new prison with a 2000 inmate capacity built in one area, away from their family and friends to spend their sentences with a shortage of many of the meagre facilities current prisons have. With little access to courses and...

Tories and cops: when thieves fall out...

When thieves fall out... The Tory party and the police are unusually at odds, and right-wing Tory journalist Max Hastings has been prompted to say some truths about the cops (Financial Times, 21 December). The Tories are angry about police resistance to budget cuts, and about Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell falling foul of the police in September. Mitchell was rude to a cop who told him to walk his bike rather than riding it, and - it seems - the cop, used to making things up against those whom he clashed with, invented the story that Mitchell had called him a "pleb" and got another cop to...

Abu Qatada should not be sent to Jordan!

Earlier this month, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled that Palestinian-Jordanian Islamist cleric Abu Qatada could not be deported to Jordan, because he might be tried there on the basis of evidence obtained under torture. The government and the tabloid press are wild with rage about this, and Home Secretary Theresa May has said she will fight the decision. Abu Qatada (real name Omar Othman) is a fascistic reactionary, and we have no brief at all for him. Nonetheless, we oppose his deportation to Jordan. If the government is able to deport political refugees to countries that use...

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