Suspended

I have to admit still being puzzled by suspended prison sentences. To me, a crime is either so serious that only a prison sentence is appropriate or it isn't. What are we actually saying when we suspend a sentence ? And how do you explain it to the victim of a crime when the perpetrator "gets off with" a suspended sentence order.

I had two recent examples that might help. Both of these came into my court on the same day.

(1) A rather nasty common assault - two drunk young women beat up another drunk woman - with kicks and blows to the head with stiletto shoes. Had a bunch of equally drunk lads not intervened, I'm sure there would have been a murder. Both girls had little previous. Sentence : 12 weeks immediate custody

(2) Local cab driver with a serious cocaine addiction that he funded by stealing golf equipment from cars at the many plush golf courses in my area. Charged with theft and possession. Fairly extensive previous for similar. Sentence : 12 weeks suspended.

So what were the difference ?

* The girls had no dependents i.e. nobody else would be harmed by them being imprisoned
* The girls had committed a violent crime
* The girls were first-time offenders
* The cabbie had substance issues that probation reckoned could be addressed through a drug treatment programme. This could prevent further offending in a way that 12 weeks prison would be unlikely to manage.
* The cabbie had children.

There's no scientific way of putting the above together and deciding to get G4S to take the girls down and releasing the cabbie rather than vice-versa. We could have decided it was a "bit extreme" to send two first-timers to prison. We could have decided that the cabbie's considerable previous meant that he was due some stick this time. In the end, we need to decide which outcome is best for society as a whole.

Now there's a phrase that bears repeating : "... we need to decide which outcome is best for society as a whole"

Heck of a job description, isn't it ?!

Gummigeschoss

... is the German word for "Rubber Bullets". Sounds to me like a new type of Haribo - a bit like Gummi Bears, just shaped like a bullet.

Anyway, I left for a holiday in Germany the night after the riots kicked off . My foot was still messed up after the accident and I had meanwhile picked up some species of fever that burned so fiercely that I couldn't sleep and so I watched over and over again on the 24-hour news channel as familiar towns repeatably burned and the financial markets entered a repeated death-spiral.

I couldn't help humming "Ride of the Valkyrie" - it was that kind of night.

While in Germany I wasn't out of touch because I had the "Bild" newspaper and my erratic German language skills.

Here's a link to one of my favourite articles :-

(original)       Kann ich jetzt noch nach London reisen?  
(translation)   Can I still travel to London ?

What's the German for "Yes - of course you can - just avoid the bits that are on fire" ?

After a wonderful holiday full of good beer, Currywurst and way too many Brötchen, I came back to find that the English press and political establishment weren't any more coherent than a sleazy German tabloid with more boobs than headlines.

But you know what ? I'm going to be one of the few people in the country who doesn't have a strong opinion on "What Must Be Done". You see, I don't live in these neighbourhoods and anything I said would be under-informed and naive.

Exactly like the Lie-Dem MPs for Waitroseshire who seem to think the Mags and Judges should have given the thugs a nice big hug and a community centre.

Or the Tory Boys who ran amok in the early '90s with the Bullingdon Posse - they want a big stick for poor people who smash stuff up.

As for the Labour Party - I couldn't work out from their impenetrable billshut what exactly their position was. Sorry.

Vote Stan.

Newton's Law

Newton's first law of motion is very soothing I find :-

"A body will continue in its present state of rest or, if it is in motion, will continue to move with uniform speed in a straight line unless it is acted upon by a force."

I was working from home Friday morning and decided to take a bit of a bike ride in my lunchhour to clear my head. I was proceeding down the main street of a local village, very much at a uniform speed in a straight line, when an external force, in the shape of a BMW, came out of a sidestreet and acted upon me.  

The physics became quite complicated after that. The car hit my back wheel, I skidded 180 degrees and ended up facing the way I had come, on my back with my right foot trapped under the bike.

24 hours later - this is what we have (yes, I am using one of my crutches to hit the button that takes pictures on my webcam) :-

No broken bones, just a bunch of what are coyly described as "soft tissue injuries". Could have been much worse - I'll just be hobbling around on crutches for a day or two.

Now, as a Magistrate I know very well that "emerging from a side road into the path of another vehicle" is a specific example of "driving without due care and attention" and he could be in line for a fine plus 3 to 9 points or a possible discretionary disqualification. As it happens I don't have any inclination to bring the law into this. Once I've given the bike a lookover I might send him a bill for any damage to that, but otherwise I just want to move on.

Sometimes stuff happens and the criminal law really doesn't help. Too early to tell how this might affect my thinking next time I get a careless driving case in court.

A Woman Killed With Kindness @ National Theatre

I've always loved the bit in the computer game "The Sims" where you've finished tinkering with the zillions of different settings that actually probably don't make any difference to the health or happiness of your virtual family, and you hit the button to fast-forward them through their day - stopping when they start yelling at you in Simmish so you can sort out their problems or (more often) so you can look on helplessly while tragedy unfolds.

That's pretty much what they've done with the play "A Woman Killed With Kindness", currently on preview at the National Theatre. The stage is split in two - and two barely connected plays take place in each half. Sometimes one side will fast-forward : the actors moving slow or not at all while servants whizz around moving stuff. Sometimes they both fast-forward. And then eventually everyone is on the same side and doing the equivalent of yelling at The Player in Simmish.

The actual plays are guff of the worst order - leaden iambic nonsense - but the acting was of a high quality and the staging was tremendous, which just about made it worthwhile for me. If only that team and that cast had picked a play with some substance. Grr!

Or as they say in Simmish (while shaking their fists) : "No pala!!! Ooh kay kay keelah!!!"

Booze and You Lose

You can be addicted to adrenalin, tanning, body-building, overeating, arson, undereating, texting, gambling, sex, work, porn, cosmetic surgery, computer games, self-harm, power, powerlessness, smoking, masturbation, caffeine, exercising, stealing, violence, vomiting, exposing yourself, social networking, shopping, religion, pleasing people, perfectionism, collecting junk, making money and to any one of a thousand of pharmacology's greatest "hits".

The Ministry of Sound reckon you can be addicted to bass and Robert Palmer points out you can also be addicted to lurve.

But it's the addiction to alcohol that is the one that I find the most horrifically fascinating.

How can it be so widespread in all cultures, so apparently random in its victims and why is it so difficult/impossible to cure ?

Although alcoholics come in all shapes and sizes, end-stage alcoholics have had all the personality drained out of them, and yes they look and behave very similarly indeed. And unfortunately that's the kind of alcoholic we get through the Magistrates court.

Unless you're a social worker or a Magistrate or live with an alcoholic yourself, I'm not convinced you would know how damaged these guys and gals are. You'll maybe have an image of drunk people shouting, fighting and chucking up in the street on a Saturday night. Most of these people aren't alcoholics at all - they'll feel rotten in the morning, sleep most of Sunday and have a quiet night on  Sunday. Merely enthusiastic amateurs.

Let me take you through the five levels of true alcoholism :-

(1) Adaptation - you drink so much and so often that your body chemistry changes so that the same level of alcohol has less and less effect.

(2) Losing Control - you drink to avoid feeling lousy rather than drinking to feel good. Thanks to your body's adaptation you need to drink so much you can't remember what happened the previous night. You don't drink just in the evenings - every hour is happy hour now. People start noticing and your work is noticeably affected.

(3) Manipulation - your life, assets and friends are used like chess pieces to get you the drink that is your main reason for living.

(4) Control, What Control ? - drink, pass out, drink more, repeat until drink gone, beg/borrow/steal more drink, drink that, repeat

(5) End State - body and mind broken, alcohol is consumed as a reflex until death occurs through organ failure, poisoning, choking, hypothermia or suicide.

We had a late stage alcoholic in the dock this Monday. He was overweight and sweat was gushing out of him. He'd been picked up on Friday night stealing meat from a supermarket to swap for booze and so when we saw him he hadn't had a drink in 60 hours and was really struggling. He had advanced heart disease, diabetes and cirrhosis of the liver. He was in his fifties but he had the face of an eighty year old who had died the previous month.

He had a considerable history of crime - back when he was just a Stage 1 or Stage 2 alcoholic, he had raped and burgled houses. Recently though he was only capable of drunk and disorderly and shoplifting - a cynic would have said that in this case, alcohol does seem to have done the world a favour.

He had failed many times to attend alcohol treatment programmes and recently the Magistrates had adopted a familiar pattern of giving Conditional Discharges where they could and short prison sentences when they couldn't. We decided this was one of those "couldn't" occasions, so off to prison he went.

Well, not quite. He reportedly collapsed in the cells and had to treated by paramedics. I'm sure the prison authorities won't thank us for dumping him on them, but what exactly were we meant to do ?

In a perfect world, maybe we would stuff him in a taxi to The Priory where he would receive the medical and psychology help he needed before being released, a new man,  back into a society to which he would now be capable of contributing.

**Rude word deleted ** !

You can't effectively section somebody for stealing bacon. And would people start feigning addiction to get a nice cushy rest-cure rather than prison ? And what about the shops - the law needs to protect them from having their shelves stripped bare. Remember, it's not all about the criminal - the victims' interests also need to be considered.

And anyway, Amy Winehouse continues to lose her fight against alcoholism despite receiving the best help that money can buy, so there's no guarantee that even the "dream" solution would get the job done.

I had a momentary mental panic about sending a dying, sick man to prison. But that's what Magistrates do on your behalf. If you don't like it, write to your MP and tell us to stop.