28.10.1999

Three-pronged assault

Criminal justice

Quite a flurry of new home office proposals greeted us at the end of last week. Determined to maintain his reputation as tough on crime, home secretary Jack Straw launched three new initiatives with negative democratic implications.

Readers will recall that last month the government tackled the ‘causes’ of crime by announcing the planned introduction of blanket drugs testing of arrested persons (see ‘Blair’s new drugs offensive’ Weekly Worker September 30). Only a few weeks later, this sledgehammer approach is being widened in a further explicit challenge to democratic rights. Now, after the announcement of mandatory drugs tests, The Sunday Telegraph tells us, “ministers wish to extend this to include alcohol levels, regardless of whether the offence is drink-related. Those who fail will be refused bail” (October 24).

As justification, Blair’s government alleges that half of all ‘street crime’ (presumably consisting mostly of robberies and assaults) is carried out under the influence of alcohol. It expects, for some unexplained reason, that such offences will soar in the next few years. So like good boy scouts they intend to ‘be prepared’, patronisingly warning the rest of us that drinking ‘over the limit’ will get us into trouble. Should we be unfortunate enough to be arrested, whether for offences against the person or against property, we will be denied bail and put in the cells even if we have only had a couple of pints and would otherwise be given police bail and sent on our way.

At the moment, bail is a right and can only be refused on specific grounds related to ensuring the accused’s appearance in court, preventing further offences or inhibiting interference with witnesses. Refusal of bail, which under this proposal would be on the say-so of a police station desk sergeant after a positive breath test for alcohol, cannot at present legitimately be used in such a punitive manner against those who, under the law, are presumed innocent until proved guilty. The proposals to deny bail on the basis of drugs and alcohol in a person’s bloodstream are a strong and dangerous attack on the presumptive right that exists at present.

Once someone has been through the courts and been found guilty of an offence, once that person has had to face up to the penalty imposed, bourgeois jurisprudence might formerly have considered them to have ‘paid for their crime’ and learnt a salutary lesson that ought to prevent re-offending. But no more. Not if the Blairites get their way: they are overturning such views and instead are trying to impose a harsher, more punitive system, with consequent serious ramifications for the working class and democratic life in general.

And there is another string to their bow. Police have just completed a £450,000 pilot scheme in Kent which involved putting up posters bearing photographs of those convicted of theft, burglary, and handling stolen goods in their areas. An unattributed home office source subsequently stated: “The feedback from Kent is positive and measures like this could really cut petty crimes” (The Sunday Telegraph October 24). So now the home office wants to expand the scheme onto a national canvas, with the possibility of even relatively petty convicted offenders like shoplifters and those who evade car tax being included in this public rogues’ gallery. Names of offenders are to be included with their pictures, though there has so far been no proposal that offenders’ addresses would be displayed too. Photos will appear in local newspapers and on posters around neighbourhoods, including in supermarkets, and could, it has been seriously suggested, even be printed on milk bottles (making us quake as we prepare our morning cornflakes).

At present, arrested people are frequently photographed, but photos are not used publicly, apart from in serious cases like rape and murder. Already there are moves to allow fingerprint records (and prints from other parts of the body, such as feet and ears) to be kept in circumstances that the safeguards in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act rules presently do not allow. All this represents another ratcheting up of the amount of information that the state’s arms can gather.

Apart from the erosion of rights, there are other distinct dangers in publishing offenders’ pictures. It constitutes a virtual invitation to vigilante-type, vengeful retribution against those already punished by the criminal law. The implication is strong that bourgeois law is incapable of dealing humanely with offenders and prefers to abrogate its responsibilities in favour of nihilistic, individualised punishment that corrodes society. A similar ‘naming and shaming’ system in the USA has led some of those thus publicly humiliated to commit suicide.

Just in case having one’s picture flaunted for the neighbours to gawp at is not sufficient discouragement for those who fail to pay their television licence fee or renew their car tax disc, Straw has pulled another rabbit out of the hat. And this, he undoubtedly thinks, is quite a clincher. To ensure that fines are paid, and paid quickly, legislation is planned to give courts powers to take large chunks, or indeed all, of the welfare benefits of those who have to claim them to exist. To date the state has been careful not to deduct more than a minimal amount from those receiving benefit or on low wages, for example, when ‘attachment of earnings’ orders are applied.

Probation officers are aghast at the idea that grossly sub-minimal benefits may be grabbed in this way, as are many others in the criminal justice system. The implications are grotesque. Already the magistrates’ courts find it next to impossible to collect fines imposed on people who are claiming benefits. Tens of millions of pounds currently outstanding bear witness to the difficulties many of those fined have in paying even a paltry £2 a week out of the measly state provision. Harry Fletcher of the National Association of Probation Officers, quoted in The Independent, makes the seemingly obvious point that, “someone who has been fined [and seeing] a huge chunk of their benefits cut or withdrawn … would be likely to go and steal. It would be self-defeating” (October 23 1999)

Communists do not view those who commit crime as simply anti-social. Most, particularly the poor and marginalised, are alienated victims too. However, when those on the fringes of society are forced to steal in order to live by the actions of the state, then it is the state, not its victims, that we condemn. Straw’s latest moves are typical of a ruling class confident of its right to rule in the absence of any kind of working class self-assertion. Unchallenged, the state will continue to impose its control at the expense of our rights and liberties. Consistent democrats decry the degradation of humanity that capitalism is constantly producing.

Jim Gilbert