Thinking far ahead.

 Subject: Thinking far ahead.





One of the ‘problems’, some would say, ‘it’s saving grace’,is the apparent inflexibility of our justice system. Arrests of known criminals are littered with twists and turns in the judicial process with the weight on the long held principle that a man or woman are innocent until proven guilty. Criminal law requires a much higher degree of proof than a civil case where a balance of probabilities is sufficient to find a guilty verdict.

The higher the the propensity of a person to be guilty of and fit the evidence exposes the system to procedural loop holes which a police-officer might then  make a procedural mistake over which a highly paid defence lawyer extract a technical acquittal.

The balance a nation needs to assure itself that ‘justice is done’ is based on the need not to be seen to punish the innocent. Unfortunately the innocent also include the victims of a crime. Including those who suffer the euphemistically named, collateral damage, as well as the fact that success in the acqital or prosecution of those’d accused is big bis The sentences ranges from “throw away the key” to primeval execution where once it is carried out there are no further arguments on the likelihood of conflict at parole time. There are time limits for murder, at least for all but premeditated murder, crimes of passion can call on the fact that in some cases, at the moment of the act, the balance of mind was disturbed and the guilt assuaged by claiming not to be yourself.

The history books are full of high profile cases where prisons have been forced to release people who the general public feel were guilty but new forensic evidence casts doubt and in the criminal court, doubt is the last thing you need to secure the conviction. And of course we see the ridiculous situation that sentencing doesn’t mean what it says since with overcrowded jails the urge is to push them out onto the public as soon as they can. So a twenty year sentence really means 10 and the criminal knows and expects this.

How then are we “smash the gangs” of people smugglers especially if they live in a foreign country with a different interpretation of the law than our own. Given the boss’s of these organisations are many layers away from loading the boats, chasing the boat is not going to stop people being risked on the passage for the glint of gold is un diminished. The risk of the boat crossing, sinking and drowning its cargo and the often optimal destabilisation of an often delicate society feeding social un cohesion (my argument) where, over time a two, maybe three tier society emerges, as in the Balkans or the impasse between Pakistan and India through religious doctrine.

‘People’, as I keep saying, are not the same and the physicality only hides the actual makeup of the individual. In the Middle East the redrawing bounties in 1916 by Francois Picot and Mark Sykes according to European convenience is the continuing curse of dynastic instability with national and tribal demarcation lines redrawn which are part of the discontent we see today. Even the Israeli/Palestinian conflict could and should have been for-seen but the politics emerging out of the First World War was too tired to think.