by Laura Perrins
A sad day for British Justice
Tomorrow the Sentencing Council imposes Two Tier Justice on the criminal justice system. It is sad day indeed when the British criminal justice system is now embedding identity politics into sentencing. Until now most Brits did not have the faintest idea what the Sentencing Council was, who was on it, or what they did.
The guidelines that have generated the hoo-ha are here. They say among other things that “a pre-sentence report will normally be considered necessary if the offender belongs to an ethnic minority, cultural minority, and/or faith minority community.” For some reason this was seen as necessary even though there is also a general guide to judges on treating everyone equally in what’s called the Equal Treatment Bench Book.
These new sentencing guidelines will create a crisis of confidence in one of the few institutions that command the respect of the British public, namely the judiciary. This isn’t some tin-pot dictatorship where the judges are intimidated by the government, or banana republic where the judges can be bought and sold on the cheap. This is Britain for goodness sake, where everyone is equal before the law, and the law is applied without fear or favour.
When it became clear that the white man who came before a court to be sentenced was less likely to have the benefit of a pre-sentence report and all hell broke loose.
The Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she would challenge the guidelines that seemed to favour ethnic minorities and punish the white man. The Tories smelling blood went in for the kill. It all came to nothing. On Friday the Sentencing Council rejected a request to change it. If anyone knows anything about Britain it is that the lawyers rule. And those who are head honchoes of the lawyers are the judges. In Britain the judges have the real power so if you thought they were going to U-turn on this, then you have not been paying attention. Lord Justice William Davis wrote on Friday, he was not for turning. Labour are stilling hoping to scrap the change. It has been quite the humdinger.
Watch: Robert Jenrick MP, Shadow Justice Secretary, on two-tier justice row