I'm glad that two of Stephen Lawrence's killers have been brought to justice. I'm uneasy both about the removal of the double jeopardy rule and about the length of time that's passed since their crime, but criminal justice is centrally about public reassurance and condemnation, and those both speak strongly in favour of their punishment. However, the reason Stephen Lawrence's murder became a public and political event, the reason it wasn't only a private wrong, was the way it, particularly once The Daily Mail got involved, and then the Macpherson report into it exposed the racist incompetence of British police forces. So in many ways, this fact (from here) is the most important thing I've seen about the coverage of their conviction today:
...those disappointed by the decade since Macpherson point at the stop and search figures. According to official statistics, in 1999-2000, a black person was five times more likely than a white person to be stopped by police. A decade later, they were seven times more likely.
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3 comments:
I am a bit less concerned about the double jeopardy principle than I used to be: there do seem to be a lot of procedural hoops the authorities have to jump through before a second trial can be held, so it's a bit hard to see the new regime being thoroughly abused -- and I'm not sure it is, in this case.
Rob, criminal justice can't really be primarily about public reassurance, can it? I mean, if that was the case it would only be of secondary importance that the people convicted were actually guilty, and of primary importance that the public believed they were guilty. That seems the wrong way around to me.
Chris, I don't think it is abused here, I'm just uneasy about it in general. It's a shibboleth of sorts, one that I might be prepared to give up, but one none the less.
Hugh, while I may have some strange views about the criminal justice system, I don't think this should be one of them. Part of the point of living under law is the security of expectations it provides. That good depends on people thinking that rights-violations will be punished or at least deterred. For a criminal justice system to ensure that people do have that confidence, it needs to publicly do that. It's not the only thing it should do, but it's one of them. To put it another way, central is not primary
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