Posted on 01/06/2003 6:45:16 PM PST by dighton
The public sees nothing wrong in burglars escaping jail, even for their second offences, Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, claimed yesterday.
Supporting the lenient approach prescribed last month by Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, he said: “I don’t accept that people are disturbed at first-time burglars or even second-time burglars - where there are no aggravated elements in the burglary - not going to prison.”
Asked about Lord Woolf’s ruling, in a guideline judgment, that courts should impose non-custodial sentences on first-time, “standard domestic” burglars, Lord Irvine said: “I have no difficulty in agreeing with the Lord Chief Justice on that.”
He insisted in a BBC interview that people had less faith in imprisonment than tabloid newspapers suggested. “In other words, I think that people are more worldly-wise, better informed, than some of the critics of the Lord Chief Justice credit.”
In an attempt to put the Court of Appeal’s recent burglary guidelines in context, the Lord Chancellor claimed that Lord Woolf and the other judges sitting with him had “sanctioned very substantial sentences of imprisonment for the three burglars whose appeals were in front of them”, and that this had been “largely ignored”.
In fact, there were two burglars before the court in the appeal decided just before Christmas and both had their sentences cut.
William McInerney, 22, who had 19 previous convictions for a total of 39 offences and who had at one stage asked for 49 other burglaries to be taken into consideration, had his five-year sentence reduced to 3.5 years.
Stephen Keating, 33, with 12 previous convictions for which he had served two terms of imprisonment, had a four-year sentence reduced to three years.
His probation officer said he had “clearly poor coping mechanisms for his offending” but did not assess him as presenting a serious risk of harm to the public.
Lord Irvine’s interview with the BBC Radio 4 Today programme had been planned before the guideline judgment on Dec 19 and was recorded last week.
He asked rhetorically whether people were better protected “by ever-increasing jail sentences of imprisonment with all the cost for the state that entails - or are they to be better protected by giving a vigorous programme of community service a chance?
“The general principle must be that you keep people out of prison if at all possible and of course that reflects the fact that we have an insupportable prison population of about 72,000. The more crowded prisons become the less able they are to educate and to deal with the causes of crime.”
Lord Irvine is the first Cabinet minister to back the Court of Appeal’s burglary guidelines. Lawyers had thought Lord Woolf was being “hung out to dry” by the Government despite espousing its policy.
But the Lord Chancellor reminded his audience that he had joined forces with the Home Secretary and the Attorney General in November “in support of generalised statements by the Lord Chief Justice that people should be sent to prison only as a last resort and always for no longer than necessary.
The evidence is that community sentences are better at preventing people from reconvicting”.
Bill Cash, the Tory MP who shadows Lord Irvine’s department in the Commons, called on the home affairs committee to examine how the burglary guidelines would operate in practice. “These guidelines have not been debated in Parliament. They concern the safety of the public and their confidence in the judicial system,” he said.
Mr Cash pointed out that someone breaking into a house could not be sure there was nobody at home. “These guidelines do not provide a sufficient deterrent in such cases.”
Sir David Calvert-Smith, QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, said the guidelines would not discourage the Crown Prosecution Service from bringing cases to court.
“Burglary is still sufficiently serious to prosecute, even if it leads to a community punishment.” The only difference he saw was that more burglars would be tried by magistrates so fewer cases would be dealt with in the Crown Court, which has heavier sentencing powers.
Ahahahahahahahaha!!!
Oh, really? Send them to my house and we'll let Lord Irvine see how many holes I put into them with my .44 magnum. Burglars don't get a pass at my house.
Excellent, excellent. I'd completely forgotten Lord Irvine's little heist.
If his meaning were that the first time burglar wouldn't make it to prison, I might agree; alas, I fear that isn't his meaning at all.
You have to have once been British to really understand what's going on here: the class system at work. Lords W & I are the equivalent of our Beverly Hills elite - except that to gain their exalted status, they didn't even need the minimal talent it takes to star in a few action movies or get lucky on an insider-trading deal. Woolf & Irvine live in places shielded from crime by battalions of bobbies - who are now armed, because that's what it takes to shield the rich in today's London.
"Tabloid readers" is British liberal shorthand for working-class white conservatives, the equivalent of "redneck". Lords Woolf & Irvine are using their pet burglars to conduct a fox hunt, with the "tabloid readers" as prey.
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