Making Justice an Easy Target
When it comes to decisions about budget cuts and funding, the administration of justice is probably the easiest target there is. The NHS makes people better, social security offers a safety net but the general population tend not to see the benefits of a well-functioning courts system. In fact it goes beyond this because when judicial decisions are in the headlines it is often because they are controversial and cause a great deal of upset.
That is what happened recently with Tracey Connelly, the mother of Baby P who has been imprisoned indefinitely since 2009 for causing or allowing the death of her 17-month-old son. Now Connelly is set to be released following a decision by the Parole Board.
In legal terms there is nothing that the Parole Board did wrong here. Andrew Sperling is the proper expert in this area and I will link to his Twitter thread below but essentially the question for the board is whether Connelly is still a threat, not ‘does she deserve to still be punished for her crime’. The decision takes into account a range of factors (including input from the Ministry of Justice) and the Secretary of State has a chance to challenge the final decision.
The Justice Secretary did challenge the decision to release Connelly but that was rejected in a scathing judgment. In one damning passage, the suggestion that not enough weight had been given to the views of the Secretary of State was thrown out of court because:
“the Secretary of State does not in his submissions identify any particular ‘view’ of his which is said to have been ignored by the panel. That is no doubt because there was no view to which he could point.”
Of course all of the fair legal reasoning in the world would not stop Dominic Raab who went on to tweet:
This is a reckless message that undermines faith in the justice system and politicises a lawful judgment but this just brings me back to my original point: the administration of justice is the easiest target for the government.
It doesn’t matter if I or any number of other legal commentators point out the inherent problems with the statement by the Justice Secretary. Using words like ‘evil’ will garner an emotional response which is almost impossible to counter. Unless Tracey Connelly remains in prison for the rest of her life, any decision to release her will always come across as ‘soft on crime’ and the Parole Board will be seen as to blame.
The justice system turns into a punching bag because ministers choose to make it so. They should be stewards of a system that upholds the rule of law but instead they desecrate it because that is politically more expedient.
This week in the podcast we talk about voter ID in the context of a challenge to a pilot scheme that was run by the government a few years ago. Voter ID is now the law following the Royal Assent of the Elections Act 2022 a few weeks ago so we also take the opportunity to discuss this legislation in the episode as well.
Episode link:
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