BLUNKETT CHARGES B&B TO VICTIMS OF MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE!!!

[themidnightgirl]

Many of you will be aware of this Sunday Herald article entitled We locked you up in jail for 25 years and you were innocent all along? That’ll be £80,000 please.

Something struck me as not entirely kosher about this. (1) Why hadn't I heard this from more reputable news-sources? (2) Were the government really sending bills to people who were the victims of miscarriages of justice?

The answers were (1) because it wasn't front page news elsewhere and (2) no.

Wrongfully imprisoned people are entitled to claim for compensation when the appeal court quashes their conviction. The legal basis for this is detailed in section 133 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. This is based on the statement by the then home secretary Douglas Hurd to the house in 1985.

What happens is that the claim is passed to an independant assessor (who is appointed by the Home Secretary, but doesn't report to him). This independant assessor then determines how much money is to be paid. There is no set formula for this (or no clear formula, anyway, more later). One component is an amount of compensation for harm done, loss of reputation, restriction of freedom. Another amount is an amount of money at most one and a half times the average industrial wage for the time spent in prison - compensation for lost earnings. I believe legal expenses and other such things can also be taken into account.

In 2001 Lord Daniel Brennan replaced Lord David Calcutt as the governments assessor in these matters. ( Bradley answer to McNamara, 15 Oct 2001).

The current issue is based around Hickey & Hickey vs Lord Daniel Brennan, reported by the Guardian here (there's corrobative evidence around if you don't trust the Guardian on this). That judgement was returned almost a year ago, and found that reduction in the amount awarded due to "saved living expenses" (i.e. an amount of money you would have spent on accomodation, food and bills, but didn't, because you were in prison) was a misinterpretation of the common law principle of "double compensation" (i.e. If I bash into your car and pay for it to be repaired, then you can't sue me for the cost of repairs).

The judge did find in favour of the Home Office in the area of reductions in compensation due to previous convictions (i.e. you wouldn't have got a very good job because you were already a con, and there's a likelyhood you might have reoffended, I guess).

Yesterday's court case, which I guess hasn't finished yet, is the appeal of that judgement. (Ref here.

It's worth pointing out the following things :-

1) This isn't about charging people for their accomodation and food while in prison - it's about how you determine what a fair level of compensation is, and what's practical for the government to give.
2) It isn't just about headline cases like the Hickeys, O'Brien, Paddy Hill etc. There have been 150 applications over the last decade. 8.05 million pounds were given out in 2000-1 alone (up from 1.54 million in 1994-5).
3) David Blunkett isn't involved directly.
As the decisions of the assessor are binding on the Home Secretary, he has no authority to charge or change anything. The appeal is being conducted by lawyers on behalf of the office of the Assessor. The question is about intepretation of the law.

What do I think?
I think that the whole compensation issue is a minefield.
1) No money is ever going to give back those years lost in prison.
2) I think the current system is not transparent enough - Justice MacKay ruled that part of the problem was that it wasn't clear how much money had been allocated in which areas. This obviously needs to be sorted.
3) The whole thing needs to be speeded up - it took 11 years for Paddy Hill to get his compensation package - that's far far too long.
4) I think the Sunday Herald's reporting is poor. They appear to have deliberately avoided revealing any actual facts about the case and about the system at all and have focussed on uninvolved people and cases.

I can't escape the feeling that there are more important issues that need focus - I find the Redwatch website thing far more horrifying than this, as a random example. That's not even touching on important things like our treatment of asylum seekers, TWII and similar...

[Footnote : I tried to get relevant articles from the telegraph, the times and the independent to provide balance. I found one related article on the independent's site, but I didn't want to pay to read it. The Telegraph' and the Times' websites are quite frankly rubbish.)

Comments

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

I'm glad someone looked a bit further into this rather than started waving torches, nice bit of investigation there.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit...bleh. I want to feel more strongly about it. I want to care more about it. I think there are faults here, things that should be better. But I just don't think it's that important.

[crag-du.livejournal.com]

OK if I cross post a link to this?
Another friend was commenting on the same issue and would probably be interested.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Sure.

[spikydavid.livejournal.com]

Another interesting issue, from the Birmingham Six case, was that everyone involved in that miscarriage of justice gets their money at the same time, or none of them do. If one of them had appealed, it would have held up the money being repaid to all of them. Again, not necessarily the fairest way of doing things.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

No, I agree. It's not fair, and it does need to be looked at.

I just...I'd rather people campaigned for the people who are still in jail for crimes they didn't commit (like Eddie Gilfoyle) than for this.
O'Brien, Hickey and Hickey seem do be doing quite a good job of fighting it themselves because they can.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Um. Yes. Not quite as super-evil as I first thought. Still rather off (especially if they're actually trying to claw money back from people who've already received it), but far from the most evil thing Blunkett is doing.

Good on you for the research.

[mirabehn.livejournal.com]

*echoes Sam*

Thanks ever so much for doing this. :)

Well, I still think it's pretty evil - and I am certainly irritated that the judge found in favour of reducing compensation because of previous convictions: I thought that part of the whole point of prison was that if you've been in prison for an offence then you've done your time and can then move on (even though obviously in practise of course the re-offending rate is quite extraordinary). But as you say, there are more important things.

I might use the writing-to-David-Blunkett-in-braille-plan anyway, but perhaps a letter supporting asylum seekers would be a better use of my time and energy.

You're clever. Thank you. :)

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

(sent here by yvesilena

Something struck me as not entirely kosher about this. (1) Why hadn't I heard this from more reputable news-sources?

I don't know what you consider a reputable news source (and I will grant that the Sunday Herald isn't), but I would certainly say that the Scotsman is one.
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=299352004
It was on the basis of that rather than the Sunday Herald that I decided to set up the petition.

I am, however, glad to find that the Scotsman was probably misinforming me.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

I'm very much wavering on this issue. I can't find anything that corroborates the Scotsman's report (which is a reputable news source, I grant). Obviously, if the Indpendent Assessor/Home office win the appeal they might be able to use that as grounds to "correct" the compensation given to other people. Perhaps. IANAL.

That would be unquestionably bad.

As I've mentioned, I think the current system is wrong, but I don't have a particularly good solution to propose. Fundamentally, compensation for the uncompensatable is never going to be particularly satisfactory. "Oops, sorry, here's some money" is always going to be...weak.

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

The other problem with this is that the financial compensation is really just a WAG (wild assed guess) - trying to put exact numbers on it like that doesn't make it any more accurate- all it does is adds insult to the injury.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. But you have to have something resembling a system, even if you realise that the system is never going to be satisfactory.

If you didn't have a formula or a method for working out what people got, then you'd be being sued all the time by people who got different amounts to other, similar, people, and that wouldn't be any good at all.