Tag Archives: justice

We do have a two tier system, Part 2

By Neil Hickman | Sun 7th June 2026 - 1:55 pm

One of the changes to civil court procedure which was made following Lord Woolf’s report in 1996 was to require a party’s statement of case to be verified by a statement of truth.

To put forward a case which you know to be a pack of lies, in other words, became a contempt of court and punishable by imprisonment.

There have been any number of cases in the last few years where people have put forward lying and fraudulent personal injury claims, and the courts have taken a pretty stern line. Thus the Court of Appeal in Liverpool Victoria Insurance Company Ltd v Zafar  (2019) “We say at once, however, that the deliberate or reckless making of a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth will usually be so inherently serious that nothing other than an order for committal to prison will be sufficient”. 

Similarly Lord Justice Moses in  South Wales Fire and Rescue Service v Smith  (2011): “Those who make such false claims if caught should expect to go to prison. There is no other way to underline the gravity of the conduct. There is no other way to deter those who may be tempted to make such claims, and there is no other way to improve the administration of justice”.

Now, those with long memories may recall the case of Mr Afzal, the defeated Labour candidate in Aston, Birmingham, in 2022. He had the brass neck to bring an election petition complaining that the Lib Dems had made false allegations against him during the campaign. He withdrew the petition after video footage emerged showing that the Lib Dem allegations had been absolutely true. The judge angrily commented that Mr Afzal “… had the audacity to issue these proceedings in the knowledge that the allegations quite properly made by the Respondents in the course of the election campaign were truthful. He persisted with the Petition and served evidence from himself and others which was and he must have known to be false”.

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Kamran Hussain

Jury trial is not a luxury or a quirky tradition

By Kamran Hussain | Wed 3rd December 2025 - 8:55 am

For over 20 years, I have stood in cramped cells and worn-out courtrooms, watching the state line up against the individual. I’ve seen frightened teenagers, exhausted mothers, people who made bad choices and people who were wrongly accused. Throughout it all, one thing has kept our justice system feeling fair: when it really mattered, ordinary people had the final say.

Twelve strangers, chosen from the community, sitting together as a jury.

Now, a Labour Government that claims to be “on the side of the many” is quietly pushing that safeguard towards the exit.

Last week, more than 100 lawyers warned the Ministry of Justice that Labour’s plan to drastically cut jury trials is a serious mistake.

In simple terms, the proposal is this: keep juries only for the very worst crimes—like murder and rape—and move a huge range of other serious offences to be decided by a judge alone. At the same time, they want to give more power to magistrates’ courts, which we already know produce some of the most unequal outcomes, especially for Black and Minority Ethnic Defendants.

And the reason given? The backlog of cases.

Yes, the backlog is real. Cases drag on for years, witnesses move away, memories fade, victims lose hope. But let’s be clear: juries didn’t create this backlog. It was created by political choices—court closures, crumbling buildings, cuts to legal aid, and fewer sitting days. Now, instead of fixing the problems, Labour wants to remove one of the foundations of our justice system.

When I talk to my clients about juries, even the most cynical ones understand. They might not trust judges or politicians, but they value the idea that “people like us” are in the room—a local builder, a teaching assistant, a retired nurse.

Take juries away from most serious cases, and you don’t just change who decides—you change how justice feels. It stops being justice with the public and starts being justice done to the public.

What’s especially frustrating is that Labour should know better. David Lammy’s 2017 review showed that juries were one of the few parts of the system that treated minority ethnic defendants fairly. The big problems were elsewhere—in policing, charging, magistrates’ courts, and sentencing. Having seen clear proof that juries work, Labour’s response seems to be: “Let’s cut them.”

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Oliver SImpson

Occupation, imprisonment and injustice: the case of Marwan Barghouti and the global silence on Palestinian detainees

By Oliver SImpson | Wed 3rd September 2025 - 1:30 pm

You are likely to find some of the details in this piece distressing

On 14 August, a video was released showing Minister for National Security Itamar Ben Gvir storming the prison cell of Marwan Barghouti. A former Fatah leader often referred to as the “Palestinian Mandela,” Barghouti is seen as a potential unity figure, historically polling above both Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas among Palestinians. He is also a known advocate for a two-state solution. The footage marked his first public appearance in years; he appears gaunt and almost unrecognisable.

Barghouti was imprisoned in the early 2000s during the Second Intifada, accused by Israel of involvement in attacks that led to the deaths of five people, accusations he has fiercely denied. His trial and imprisonment have been heavily criticised by human rights groups, with The Inter-Parliamentary Union having asserted that the “numerous breaches of international law” to which Barghouti was subjected “make it impossible to conclude that Mr. Barghouti was given a fair trial.” 

Throughout his imprisonment, Barghouti has endured harsh and degrading treatment. This has included being placed in solitary confinement for years, at times making it impossible for his family to visit him. Since the Hamas-led attacks on October 7th, his treatment has become more severe and brutal. Immediately following the attacks, he was put back into solitary confinement. In March 2024, he told his lawyers how he had been “dragged across the floor by his handcuffs, before he was beaten unconscious.” In May 2024, The Guardian described how Barghouti “spends his days huddled in a cramped, dark, solitary cell, with no way to tend to his wounds, and a shoulder injury from being dragged with his hands cuffed behind his back”. His family have expressed their fear that he will die in Israeli prisons due to his mistreatment.

However, the treatment of Marwan Barghouti is anything but an isolated case; the plight of Palestinian detainees is well documented and the brutality they are subject to systematic and widespread. 

Since Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and East Jersualem during the course of the Six Day War in 1967, up to a million Palestinians in the these territories have been arrested and been subject to the Israeli Military Court system (although these courts no longer operate in Gaza since 2005, and East Jerusalem, which Israel has unilaterally annexed in violation to international law). Detainees under this system are subject to numerous abuses which have been widely documented and condemned by human rights groups, including, but not limited to, the mistreatment and torture of detainees, the widespread practice of administrative detention, the impediment a defendants’ access to lawyers and the introduction of “secret evidence” used against the accused. 

Under this system, roughly 20% of the Palestinian population have been arrested at some point in their lives, with this statistic rising to 40% for the male population. 

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Mark Valladares

31 October 2024 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Thu 31st October 2024 - 11:30 pm
  • Ed Davey: Exempt social care from National Insurance tax hike
  • Budget: online gambling tax “a missed opportunity” for fairer NHS and care funding
  • Govt makes new commitment to create a ‘national cancer plan’ at Lib Dem led debate
  • Scot Lib Dems respond to government ditching pilot of juryless trials

Ed Davey: Exempt social care from National Insurance tax hike

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey has called on the government to exempt social care from the employer’s National Insurance tax rise.

The Chancellor has provided extra funding for the NHS and other public sector organisations to cover the cost of the tax rise. However, the vast majority of care providers are private and so won’t benefit from this help.

98% of care providers – 18,000 organisations – are small employers. The Liberal Democrats have said care providers including care homes and those providing care in people’s homes should be exempt from the National Insurance tax hike.

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey said:

Hammering small businesses with a tax hike is the wrong choice. It will hit people’s wages and jobs, but it also risks worsening the NHS crisis by hiking costs for care providers and pushing some to the brink.

It just shows that yet again the government seems to have forgotten about care. At the very least, the Chancellor should be exempting social care from this costly jobs tax.

Budget: online gambling tax “a missed opportunity” for fairer NHS and care funding

Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey is calling on the Government to double the tax on online gambling firms as a “much fairer” way to raise money for the NHS and social care.

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Catherine Royce

So… what about women and girls?

By Catherine Royce | Sun 18th August 2024 - 11:55 am

The new Labour government is showing commendable vigour in pursuing the latest batch of racist rioters, the courts are correspondingly raising their game in rapidly hearing cases and sentencing, and sufficient prison places have been made available, so it seems that it is possible for the judicial system to work when the political will is there, a refreshing change.

 So I wonder if the government can show an equal willingness to address the longstanding outrage of women and girls not having their cases of sexual violence and rape heard in court.

Many are waiting as long as 3 years to reach court; is this fair or equitable when the racist hooligan is being dealt with in weeks? I grant this is urgent and about restoring public order, community safety and sending an unequivocal signal that racism will not be tolerated, but set against that the daily trauma suffered month after month, year after year, for women and girls living in the same community, sometimes even the same street or even the same building as their alleged sexual perpetrators, who meanwhile are free to daily harass, stalk and re-offend as they please.  

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David Gray

Prosecuting the Lowery photo football ‘fan’ sets a dangerous precedent

By David Gray | Sun 19th November 2023 - 10:30 am

Football fans across the country were rightly appalled by pictures of two Sheffield Wednesday fans appearing to use the image of a young cancer victim to mock their opponents. One imagines that if, as seems likely, they both receive lengthy bans from all football grounds in the country, few tears will be shed. Certainly not from the Lowery family, who have acted with dignity throughout.

However, the ramifications have gone further than this. The pair were both arrested, and the man holding up the image has been charged with a public order offence and sentenced to 12 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, in addition to 200 hours of community service.

It’s not the first time that football fans have been prosecuted for similarly vile behaviour. Earlier this year, a Man United fan was fined £1000 for wearing a shirt mocking victims of the Hillsborough disaster, while a Plymouth fan was fined £750 for claiming on Twitter that their striker was “on fire like Mick Philpott’s house”.

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Richard Kemp

Lib Dems need to do something about jury duty

By Richard Kemp | Tue 13th December 2022 - 1:55 pm

Embed from Getty Images
The importance to our judicial system of having a jury of ‘ordinary’ people who are the sole judge of guilt in a case is a thing of which we should be immensely proud but, having done my jury duty I feel it is in need of huge reform.

In October a dreaded letter arrived out of the blue. Some malevolent machine had drawn my name out of the unlucky lottery, and I was summoned to appear for Jury Duty.
It is quite an inverse lottery. According to the letter about 200,000 are chosen at random every year from the electoral register for two weeks jury duty.

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Wera Hobhouse MP

Hobhouse: Swift justice for victims and offenders needed

By Wera Hobhouse MP | Sun 13th March 2022 - 4:46 pm

A robust and well-functioning justice system is a foundation stone of society.

But in England and Wales we are facing a soaring backlog of court cases.

The backlog of outstanding criminal cases in the Crown Court stood at 59,928 at the end of September. 13,202 cases in the backlog are more than a year old.

A Crown Court case now takes an average of 23 months from offence to completion.

Court backlogs have caused the number of people being held in prison on remand to rise by 48% since 2018.

The independent Chief Inspectors of Constabulary, the Crown Prosecution Service, Prisons, and Probation have identified the “unprecedented and very serious court backlogs” as “the greatest threat to the proper operation of the criminal justice system”.

Long delays increase the number of people held in prison on remand, putting even more strain on overcrowded prisons. It can also lead to victims and witnesses withdrawing, making it more likely that the case collapses.

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Antony Hook

Liberal Democrats must speak out for jury trials

By Antony Hook | Tue 11th January 2022 - 8:49 am

When anyone attacks the jury system, Liberal Democrats should be vocal and prominent in defending it.

Just a few days into 2022 we saw, after the acquittal of the Colston 4, a sustained attack from Conservative voices. Their target was not just the verdict but on the jury system generally.
Juries are a precious safeguard of freedom. Our party has said so many times in our policy papers. The fight to establish juries as the fundamental deciders of whether a defendant is guilty or not was hard won. It was a struggle over centuries. It is a story entwined with the anti-establishment roots of the Liberal Democrats.

Last week’s mudslinging at the “the lamp by which liberty shines” (as Lord Bridge once called juries) is not the first bout of Tory anti-juryism. But it is particularly disquieting, albeit foreseeable, to hear it from buddies of the present government. The words of Conservative journalists and backbenchers are often used to scout positions and for ministers to stoop down to later.

Tory ministers have a record of trying to upend constitutional safeguards for partisan interest. Attempting to prorogue parliament to prevent votes on Brexit in Autumn 2019 was perhaps the worst example. The astonishing, repeated coincidences of donations with honours or policy outcomes is another. It is easy to imagine that this dangerous government might seek to interfere with the jury system.

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Mark Valladares

20 October 2020 – the overnight press releases

By Mark Valladares | Tue 20th October 2020 - 7:30 am
  • Liberal Democrats: Government inaction failing survivors of sexual violence
  • Reversing Liberal Democrat Immigration Bill amendments risks “new Windrush-style Scandal”

Liberal Democrats: Government inaction failing survivors of sexual violence

Responding to the Victims Commissioner’s report on rape survivors and the criminal justice system, Liberal Democrat Justice Spokesperson Wera Hobhouse said:

Survivors deserve justice. They must be properly supported to come forward and be listened to when they do.

However, as this report shows, far too many survivors are put off reporting the crime for fear of being disbelieved, and far too many who do come forward find the whole process traumatic. Government inaction is failing survivors of sexual violence and allowing too many criminals to walk free.

It is incomprehensible that the Government’s review of rape cases is doing so little to engage with survivors – especially given the clear evidence that the system simply isn’t working for them.

Ministers must listen to survivors, complete the review as soon as possible, and urgently make improvements across the whole justice system. Survivors mustn’t be left waiting any longer for the justice they need.

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James Baillie

Ending overpolicing: a new, liberal approach

By James Baillie | Sat 20th June 2020 - 12:47 pm

As liberals, we are uniquely placed on issues of tackling societal problems, as the UK party which has historically been driven by caring from the community level up, not just the top down: redistributive, willing to stand up for those marginalised by society, and sceptical of an overbearing and authoritarian state infrastructure.

Today, especially given the racial disparities which are all too clear in our policing and our society as a whole, that liberal legacy must be put to work again, starting a radical rethink of how Britain deals with its social problems. We use the police for far too many problems across our society: overstretched forces dealing with problems the police were never going to be effective at solving, leading to problems developing, community mistrust, and discriminatory outcomes. It’s a round peg in a square hole that’s damaging all of us as successive governments keep trying the authoritarian method of hammering it in ever harder. But there is a better way.

Finding ways to ensure people, especially black people, feel reassured that the police have appropriate powers and oversight has to be part of the puzzle. Stop and Search powers are largely ineffectual, widely mistrusted, and statistically clearly flagrantly racist in their deployment. There can no longer be any argument for Section 60 powers that allow Stop and Searches without suspicion of a crime to be controlled solely within the police force: they should be abolished and an external magistrate should be required to sign any sort of future search order, reducing overuse and acting as an important assurance for communities. Stronger oversight measures that bring in communities better, and ensuring that groups like the Border Force come under proper scrutiny, are also important parts of that picture.

The real task ahead, however, is to broaden our conception of how to deal with societal problems away from simply using the procedural justice system, the pipeline of policing, courts and sentencing that we rely on for far too many of our problems. On the front line, we should be piloting community teams that work on conflict de-escalation and helping people toward other services they need. Run from local government not from the Home Office, these could provide a more easily trusted, more engaged service that is better equipped to deal with problems, preventing them escalating and providing a more specialised approach to solving a wide range of problems in a more localised and sensitive way. That could mean anything from ensuring homeless people have good access to night services, to talking people through a neighbourhood conflict that has caused, or risks causing, property damage, to forwarding a shoplifting incident to appropriate restorative justice systems.

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Martin Thomas

Lord Martin Thomas writes: Building a justice system that offers rehabilitation and hope

By Martin Thomas | Sun 20th October 2019 - 8:55 am

No one will forget the pictures three weeks ago of the shaven headed prisoners  clad in orange trousers, sardined together in an improvised prison cell in Northern Syria. Nothing to do except exist. They were captured ISIL fighters, at least a third of whom were foreigners, including British citizens, who had flocked to join the caliphate. My sympathy for them is non existent.  Their captors, the Kurdish SDF, regard them as a time bomb and in the events of the last few days, can no  longer guarantee to hold them. But it was their eyes that caught my attention.

I have seen eyes like that before. In the early eighties, I was privileged to tour the Vietnamese Boat People’s heavily guarded camps in Hong Kong where refugee families were warehoused in three storey high, square steel pods, awaiting endlessly to be processed. They had nothing to do. My Report, made for the Leader of the Liberal Party, Lord Steel, and passed to the British government, was according to my UNHCR contacts at the time, influential in opening the gates of the camps to permit the males useful daytime work within the HK community.

Contrast Death Row in a Caribbean country, where 180 men sentenced to death stood around in a compound built for fifty and despaired. The opposition campaigned vigorously for the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council  so that the gallows at the end of the building could do their work. Why bother with rehabilitation?

So it was with some weariness that I heard again the proposal in the Queen’s Speech to waste the limited resources of the Justice Department on lengthening sentences of imprisonment, instead of focusing on running the jails properly, killing off the drug trade, and making a real effort to release into the community people who will not offend again.In 2014, with the active support of the Liberal Democrats in the Welsh Parliament, permission was granted for the Berwyn training prison to be built on the Industrial Estate of my home town, Wrexham. I was intrigued because in my youth, I had worked on that very site as a member of a railway gang with my pick and shovel. We were replacing wooden war time sleepers with concrete supports. I know the area well. I watched the buildings go up to open at a cost of £250 millions as the largest operational prison in the UK and the second largest in Europe. Here, I thought, was the opportunity with the excellent modern design and facilities, really to do something to tackle attitudes, to change people’s lives, to turn prisoners away from crime.  All “rooms” have integral sanitation, a shower cubicle, a PIN phone, and a UniLink laptop terminal. It opened in February 2017. It is designed to hold up to  2106 prisoners serving 4 years or more.

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Caron Lindsay

Rape victims should not have to hand over phones to get justice

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 30th April 2019 - 10:15 am

Yesterday’s news that victims of rape and sexual assault in England and Wales are among those who could be required to hand over their phones for scrutiny as a precondition for getting justice is a very worrying development.

It is hardly going to encourage people to come forward if they have to allow Police to trawl through their entire public and private social media and many will fear that material which is entirely unrelated to the offence could be used in evidence. You also need to take into consideration that messages sent could be used to imply consent that simply was not there at the time the offence was committed.

Victims fear that giving defence lawyers access to their data will simply mean that they will face the sort of character assassinations in court that women who dared to wear short skirts in public used to get.

There is nothing about a person’s clothing or behaviour that ever justifies rape. End of.

What has been interesting is that many of the usual media suspects have published articles opposing this policy.

An anonymous writer int he Guardian describe her experience.

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The Voice

16-17 March 2019 – the weekend’s press releases (part 2)

By The Voice | Mon 18th March 2019 - 3:34 pm

Lib Dems: Revoke Article 50 if a deal isn’t agreed

The Liberal Democrats have today called for the Government to revoke Article 50 if no Brexit deal can be agreed a week before departure date.

The proposal, debated and passed by delegates at the Liberal Democrat Spring Conference in York today, comes after a week of key Brexit votes in the House of Commons in which MPs again rejected Theresa May’s deal, ruled out no-deal and voted to extend Article 50.

Speaking after the debate, Liberal Democrat Brexit Spokesperson Tom Brake MP said:

It is absolutely clear that Brexit will hit

…

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Lord Navnit Dholakia

How transgender people are treated in prison

By Lord Navnit Dholakia | Fri 29th June 2018 - 10:25 am

One of the questions that has been voiced on Twitter recently in the debate about trans women has been the case of the Soham murderer, who in 2002 as Ian Huntley murdered two ten year old school girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and was jailed for 40 years. A number of tabloid newspapers have reported that Huntley is transitioning, and wishes to be called Lian. Incidentally, the prison service has said several times that Huntley is not planning transition.

There are those who say that giving any trans prisoner with a violent past the rights to move to a woman’s prison and mix with women puts women prisoners at risk. They have even tried to say that the Liberal Democrats in supporting trans rights, do not care about women’s rights in prison.

I see that Sal Brinton has written about the Liberal Democrat policies on trans matters, and I wanted to write about the formal process that the National Offender Management Service insists on for the care and management of transgender offenders, designed to both recognise the rights of trans people in prison, but also ensuring the safety of other prisoners and staff. Their policy can be found here,

Pages 12-13 sets out the protocol relating to sentenced prisoners. It says that there will be an initial Local Transgender Case Board after a prisoner declares, and can provide evidence, that they are living in the gender the offender identifies with, and will, as appropriate, make arrangements for transfers to other parts of the prison estate.

With prisoners who might also be deemed a risk to other prisoners, there then has to be a Complex Case Board called for Transgender Offenders, which will look at the complexity and specifically assess the risk of harm prior to making decisions about prison location. The views of the offender must be presented to the Board, but there are a number of healthcare and psychology leads there to ensure that any move to a women’s prison would be safe.

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NewsHound

Another civil liberties victory for the Scottish Lib Dems

By NewsHound | Wed 12th July 2017 - 12:55 pm

Over the years, the Scottish Liberal Democrats have been responsible for a number of changes in policing and civil liberties policies in Scotland. After we led the opposition, the Scottish Government had to abandon plans for a super ID database that would have made Labour’s look like a champion of civil liberties. Alison McInnes, when she was Justice Spokesperson in the last Parliament, successfully fought both routine arming of the Police and indiscriminate stop and search.

That record continues as the Lib Dems have now ensured that Police Scotland has deleted records of half a billion numberplates captured under numberplate recognition.

From Scotland on Sunday:

The climbdown comes after a Lib Dem Freedom of Information request last year revealed that 852,507,524 number plate records captured by automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras across the country were held in a Police Scotland database, with data available from as far back as 2009. Data retention laws require that any such information is only kept for crimes, while all other data must be deleted. The Lib Dems had expressed concern that the retention of so much information relating to innocent individuals was infringing on people’s civil liberties. The number of records deleted was revealed by the police in response to another Freedom of Information request submitted by the Lib Dems. Information provided by the police showed 547,459,904 number plate records had been disposed of.

Scottish Lib Dem Justice Spokesperson Liam McArthur said:

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Ben Andrew

Why criminal records have to go

By Ben Andrew | Fri 9th December 2016 - 8:55 am

If you ask Lib Dems whether they suppport prison reform, they will say yes. A general chat about rehabilitation, drug laws, mental health funding and Scandenavia usually ensues – all of which I wholly endorse. But if we are really going to address our prison crisis, then criminal records are the elephant in the room.

Rehabilitation is about allowing people to become productive parts of society after they leave prison, and discouraging reoffending. One of the best ways to do this is to help people find employment (as page 8 of the Ministry of Justice’s Transforming Rehabilitation document confirms). If someone lands a stable job after leaving prison, then of course they’re less likely to reoffend. Employment gives people structure, income and purpose. It’s common sense that it helps them reintegrate into society.

But if ex-prisoners have to disclose their criminal records as soon as they apply for a job, why are we surprised that so many of them remain unemployed? What incentive do employers have to take a chance on them, when the job market is so tough as it is? We seem to paradoxically believe that it’s important for ex-offenders to find work, but that no employer should have to risk hiring them. Employers might feel safer being able to sivve former criminals out without hesitation, but it’s agonizingly counter-productive for society. Poor rehabilitation leads to an increase in crime, and puts all of us in danger. Freezing ex-offenders out of the job market makes everyone less safe.

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Caron Lindsay

Liz Truss as you have never seen her before

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 27th July 2016 - 3:00 pm

If it hadn’t been for one of our peers moving house, we might never have had this wee gem fall into our hands.

We know that new Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Liz Truss was once a young Liberal Democrat activist before joining the Tories. However, we now have photographic evidence from an LDYS newsletter from the time of one Elizabeth Truss proudly holding up the LDYS banner on a mass trespass at Twyford Down in protest at the Criminal Justice Bill on 2 July 1994. Simon Hughes also took part.

This controversial piece of legislation was introduced by Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard and offended liberals by restricting raves, allowing inferences to be drawn from a suspect exercising a right to silence and strengthening unsupervised stop and search powers. Those latter powers were still being used until the Coalition years, when their use was curbed thanks to the influence of Liberal Democrats in government. See below in the comments for Rob Banks saying that he took the photo that appeared in the leaflet.

Screen Shot 2016-07-27 at 14.34.11

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The aging prison population

By Ian Thomas | Mon 18th July 2016 - 11:00 am

 

With so much focus being placed on young offenders and the poverty traps that keep them locked in a cycle of crime, little attention has been given to an ever increasing section of the national prison population. In England and Wales, male offenders aged 50 or above are the fastest growing group in prison, rising by 74% in the past decade to close to 10,000 (that’s 11% of the total prison population), while since 1990 the over-60s population has increasing eight-fold.

A succession of governments, wanting to appear ‘tough on crime’, have led to an increased pressure on the judicial system to hand out an increasing number of longer-term sentences. A rapidly aging long-term prison population now suffers from an accelerated aging process due to a combination of the health risks associated with criminal lifestyles and the psychological strains of prison life, which has led to more and more pressure being placed on correctional services that are now unable to cope with the changing nature of prison care for many inmates.

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The Voice

Lib Dems condemn Gove’s prison reforms

By The Voice | Wed 18th May 2016 - 9:13 am

So the Government thinks the solution to the crisis in our prisons is to give governors more power rather than have a more strategic sense of what the prison system is for and how best to lessen re-offending and properly rehabilitate offenders.

Liberal Democrat peer Jonathan Marks is unimpressed with the Government’s plans. He said:

It is a scary thought that the grand architect who oversaw the dismantling of the school system as we knew it is now getting his hands all over the nation’s prisons.

It is no secret that our prison system is in crisis. We lock up far too many people each year with inadequate facilities and staffing.

These reforms might tackle the problems at the surface but without root and branch reform of our criminal justice system the whole process will be built to fail.

The academy model for schools is falling apart as we speak so why the Government feels that this template is appropriate for prisons is incomprehensible.

Instead we should be focusing on ensuring that our criminal justice system is centred on rehabilitation and diverting people away from prisons wherever possible rather than this continued obsession with locking them up.

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NewsHound

Scottish Lib Dems to oppose jail terms of less than a year

By NewsHound | Sun 14th February 2016 - 1:00 pm

The Scottish Liberal Democrats have announced another major policy. A few weeks go, they announced their penny on income tax to raise £475 million for investment in education.

Today, Justice spokesperson Alison McInnes has announced that the party will oppose prison sentences of less than a year.

From the BBC:

As part of their 2016 election manifesto, the Scottish Liberal Democrats are to formally back doubling that, by extending the presumption to 12 months.

Justice spokeswoman Alison McInnes said prison sentences for more serious offenders should be complemented by “tough” community service programmes.
“One of the main priorities for Scottish Liberal Democrats is having a criminal justice system where if someone breaks the law, they are swiftly brought to justice,” she said. “But we also believe offenders deserve a chance to get back on track and community rehabilitation is a fundamental part of that.

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Paul Walter

Assange: From Townsville to Knightsbridge via Cloud Cuckoo Land

By Paul Walter | Sat 6th February 2016 - 10:50 am

In Evelyn Waugh’s “Handful of Dust”, the fortunate owner of a fantastic Gothic English country pile, Tony Last, has an idyllic life which is gradually brought crashing down by a series of unfortunate events including betrayal by his wife. He ends the book trapped as a prisoner in the Brazilian jungle – the plaything of an insane tribal chief – having to continually read Charles Dickens’ “Little Dorrit” to the inhabitants.

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Caron Lindsay

Another vindication for Alison McInnes on civil liberties as regulation of facial recognition technology recommended

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 27th January 2016 - 3:48 pm

There has been a pattern in this Holyrood Parliament of Scottish Liberal Democrat Justice Spokesperson Alison McInnes finding out the SNP on some major civil liberties fail (armed police, excessive use of stop and search, including of children), the SNP just not getting it and then Alison being absolutely vindicated.

Today, that happened again. Last year, Alison highlighted the dangers of unregulated use of facial recognition technology by the Police after discovering that over 335,000 people’s images were retained on a police database.

A report today makes a number of recommendations to regulate this practice. The SNP Justice Secretary had previously dismissed Alison’s concerns.

The report concluded that there is “a need for improved legislation and better independent oversight around the police use of biometrics in Scotland, an independent Scottish Commissioner to oversee biometric databases should be established, as was introduced in England and Wales in 2012 when the Liberal Democrats were in the coalition government and a statutory code of practice governing the use of biometric data should be developed.

Alison said:

This review vindicates the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ campaign highlighting the inadequate safeguards governing the use of our biometric data and in particular facial recognition technology.

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NewsHound

Alison McInnes questions comments of rape trial judge

By NewsHound | Wed 2nd December 2015 - 11:51 am

Last week, I read a blog post by legal expert Andrew Tickell which horrified me. That post, and the judgment of the Appeal Court to which it refers had me feeling sick and shaking, so be aware that it contains some horrible details of rape of adults and children  and the sexual abuse of a child before you click on it. The judgment was for an appeal by the prosecution in a case of rape and sexual abuse which ultimately had the rapist’s prison sentence raised from five to eight years.

The judgment drew attention to remarks made by the trial judge which belittled the rape and suggesting that the victims had acquiesced to or condoned the rapes and that they were minor.

Scottish Liberal Democrat Justice spokesperson Alison McInnes has taken this up with one of Scotland’s most senior judges as Scottish Legal News reports:

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Tom Brake

Tom Brake MP writes…Violation of judicial process by Bangladesh International Criminal Tribunal

By Tom Brake | Fri 20th November 2015 - 12:25 pm

This week the Bangladesh Supreme Court upheld the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) decision to execute Salauddin Quader Chowdhury. This represents the second rejection for Mr Chowdhury, following his original appeal in July 2015. This is a grave injustice for Chowdhury and for Bangladesh.

In 2013, Chowdhury was sentenced to death by the ICT for war crimes allegedly committed during the 1971 Bangladesh Independence War. The original trial, like many others heard by the ICT, has received widespread criticism including from the United Nations and Amnesty International for procedural irregularities and the violation of international fair trial standards.

The case of Salauddin Quader Chowdhury was marred by irregularities, the worst of which relates to witnesses for the Defence. The Court imposed a last minute restriction to the number of witnesses the Defence was permitted to call. The Prosecution called 41 witnesses to take the stand against Chowdhury. On the day the final Prosecution witness was called, the Court branded the 1153-long witness list a ploy aimed at delaying the case and arbitrarily cut the Defence witness list to just five.

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Caron Lindsay

Farron: Ministry of Justice need to be “dragged into 21st century” over Tara Hudson

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 29th October 2015 - 8:58 am

Tim Farron has intervened in the case of Tara Hudson, the transgender woman from Bath who has been sent to serve a 12 week prison sentence at an all male prison because, basically, of some paperwork. She’s never applied for a Gender Recognition Certificate, but she has lived as a woman for all of her adult life.

Tim expressed his fears for Tara’s safety to Pink News. He said:

The Liberal Democrats will raise this case in Parliament.

There is a clear need for a policy change in this area. It looks like the Ministry of Justice needs be dragged kicking into the 21st century.

As I understand it, Tara has lived all her adult life as a female. I worry potential risk of harm to her in a male prison which was deemed to have levels of violence ‘considerably higher than in similar prisons’ by the prisons inspectorate.

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Caron Lindsay

Scottish Liberal Democrat Alison McInnes saves our civil liberties…again

By Caron Lindsay | Tue 21st April 2015 - 9:30 pm

There may only be five Scottish Liberal Democrat MSPs,sadly, but by heavens they have delivered incredible things.

As Justice Spokesperson for the last four years, Alison McInnes has stopped the SNP Government in its tracks several times. She couldn’t stop them centralising the Police, but she could make a fuss when statistics showed that officers were stopping and searching children. She made a fuss when the SNP started using armed patrols on routine duties in peaceful Highland communities. She defended our rights when the SNP tried to remove the requirement for corroboration in our legal system. She explained why this was so important at our Conference in Autumn 2013:

This is a profound change – sweeping aside centuries of well-established Scottish legal practice.

Conference, Scots Law is not safe in the hands of the Scottish National Party.

In Scotland the Crown prosecutes in the public interest. We must guard against any shift towards prosecuting in the victim’s interest. That would be at odds with our fundamental liberal belief in the need for a robust, transparent and independent justice system.

We need to defend the principle of the presumption of innocence and safeguard against false accusation, wrongful conviction and miscarriages of justice.

The SNP’s proposals will mean that someone could be convicted on the basis of the testimony of just one person, even if five of the fifteen jurors believe that they are innocent.

Witnesses can be honest yet mistaken. Their evidence persuasive but wrong.

And, unfortunately, witnesses do sometimes lie to the police and in court- out of earnest to ensure that the accused is convicted, because of the strength of their convictions or through spite.

I am concerned that scrapping corroboration could mean that false accusations could become more common. The Law Society of Scotland warns that trials could be reduced to “a contest between two competing statements on oath”.

Eventually, after protest from many bodies across Scotland, the government agreed to a review – which would report after the legislation had been passed. Alison rightly thought this was ridiculous and didn’t rest until the plans were postponed until the publication of the review.

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Cara Jenkinson

Opinion: Are we transforming rehabilitation?

By Cara Jenkinson | Thu 12th February 2015 - 3:26 pm

On Tuesday the London ‘Standard’ had the depressing headline “Rioters in new crime wave”. According to official statistics 1593 of the 3914 people charged or cautioned by the Met following the riots in August 2011 have since reoffended.

At our Autumn Conference in the month following the riots, I raised concerns as a Haringey magistrate that a knee-jerk approach was being taken to sentencing, with courts sitting overnight, dishing out custodial sentences as fast as they could. Prisons became overcrowded, sometimes with three prisoners sharing a cell meant for one; and precious little rehabilitation was going on.

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Penelope Gibbs

The Independent View: Liberal Democrat MPs should vote against secure colleges which would put younger children and girls at risk

By Penelope Gibbs | Mon 1st December 2014 - 8:55 am

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails” said Nelson Mandela. Well, what would it reveal about the state of our nation if we were to hold our youngest children and some of the country’s most vulnerable girls in unsafe conditions where they felt fearful, intimidated and isolated?

On Monday, Liberal Democrat MPs will cast the deciding votes on whether this becomes a reality.

The Commons will consider an amendment made by the House of Lords to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill on “secure colleges” – the new form of child custody introduced by the Bill. These will be very large institutions (there’ll be 320 beds in the first one) which Chris Grayling, the Tory Justice Secretary, is adamant must hold girls and boys between 12 and 17 years of age.

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Caron Lindsay

Police Scotland change armed policing policy – a victory for Lib Dem McInnes

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 2nd October 2014 - 1:45 pm

Armed Police graphicWe’ve covered the controversy over the use of armed police in Scotland several times over the past few months. A standing authority for firearms led to armed officers patrolling Scotland’s streets, often against the wishes of local communities, particularly in the Highlands. People had been horrified to see police officers with guns in their holsters going into the shops in peaceful Highland villages. Concerns were also raised that the routine arming of Police would lead to criminals routinely arming themselves, making us all less safe.

Danny Alexander took exception to armed police patrolling the streets of Inverness. Alison McInnes, the highly effective Liberal Democrat Justice Spokesperson in the Scottish Parliament, has campaigned tirelessly for a change in policy. And yesterday, Police Scotland changed its mind. The BBC reports;

Specialist armed police officers in Scotland will in future only be deployed to firearms incidents or where there is a threat to life.

The move came following concerns from politicians about officers carrying weapons while on routine patrol.

Opposition parties described the move as a U-turn.

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