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In the light of John Major's comments re: the 42 days issue, I'd like to remind everyone of one thing.
The debate before the house is not referring to the total period a person can be kept inside before they have to be released. This is, in fact, about whether or not we should have 42 days of imprisonment for people before they are even told what they are supposed to have done wrong. Once you have been charged, once the rozzers have deigned to tell you what they think you've done, you can still be kept locked up for an almost indefinite period, up to and including your trial, given the consent of the judiciary.
The sole reason that this measure has been introduced is that when the police bring charged suspects before the courts, a lot of the time the courts say
Given that you can be detained almost indefinitely post-charge, do we really need to have a limit of more than a week? Or even a couple of days? America manages with a two day limit...
The debate before the house is not referring to the total period a person can be kept inside before they have to be released. This is, in fact, about whether or not we should have 42 days of imprisonment for people before they are even told what they are supposed to have done wrong. Once you have been charged, once the rozzers have deigned to tell you what they think you've done, you can still be kept locked up for an almost indefinite period, up to and including your trial, given the consent of the judiciary.
The sole reason that this measure has been introduced is that when the police bring charged suspects before the courts, a lot of the time the courts say
this man is clearly innocent, let him go, and the government wants to stop innocent people being released because they think it makes them look soft. Does anyone have any doubt at all that the three (yes, THREE, such a huge proportion of our 60,000,000+ population!) people who have so far been kept to 28 days under the current legislation before being charged would have been allowed to be detained post-charge by a court? FFS... What sort of country are we living in when someone can be locked up for any significant length of time without even being told what they are suspected of doing? How the hell have we come to having our government piss wantonly and indiscriminately all over habeas corpus without a peep from most of us about it? I'm sorry, I'm becoming incoherent. This just makes me SO ANGRY.
Given that you can be detained almost indefinitely post-charge, do we really need to have a limit of more than a week? Or even a couple of days? America manages with a two day limit...
Current Mood: 
infuriated
infuriated6 rants | rant