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Seems the government want to give a lighter sentence to those who plead guilty at the police station during interview.
Good idea,if the person is indeed guilty,but will no doubt be used by an already corrupt police force to pressure innocent suspects into pleading guilty,so as to avoid a trial etc.
For those not in the know look up the JK song 'Plead guilty' to understand more about it.
JK2006 wrote: Thank you IA - I hope my comments in that lyric stopped you pleading Guilty and ruining your life!
Very true JK,we've both been put under pressure to plead guilty to something we didn't do.
I hadn't heard it on my first arrest,but had by my second interrogation,where it made a lot of sense.
Brilliant song and along with SHAMI my fave from VILE PERVERT. Though I admit to a bit of bias because I did the gigs for the Dastards ( which were fantastic ) when the song came out !!!
The idea of cutting a sentence in HALF if someone pleads guilty at the first opportunity is a good one. If the person is guilty and there is overwhelming evidence then it makes sense to try and save £10s of thousands of pounds of court costs etc etc at the earlist opportunity. I think this should apply to all crimes including murder as well.
The THIRD off if you do it before a verdict is also worth it - though if a trial has started then surely it should not apply because there is no benefit at all.
However, in "Sex Allegations" cases many people plead guilty in order to avoid what they would see as a DAMAGING trial dragging out over weeks and months ruining their name - whereas pleading Guilty may mean a jail sentence but without hysterical press coverage which is the most damaging aspect of these cases for most people especially celebrities or well known public figures.
I can also see why someone in a position of authority would commit suicide rather than face the stress of allegations in an open court - espcially if such allegations were made from deep history and therefore could not be defended against in any way except to say - no I did not do it ( which is no defence against someone saying Yes he did do it !!! these days in the corrupt UK Justice system where everyone is GUILTY until they can prove themselves INNOCENT.
In many cases they cant even as a prosecution prove that the "Victim" was actually WITH the defendant at any time. Circumstantial evidence that they vaguely know each other is usually enough ! Which is totally ridiculous.
If everyone pleads GUILTY then we will have to build double the number of Prisons - which could be the down side to such a policy - because Judges potentially will give a bigger sentence initially before the discount.
For instance if the max tariff is 10 years for say Indecent Assault - to reach that 10 year sentence the accused would start with a 1 or 2 year sentence and then get added years for mitigating cirumstances like use of violence - abuse of trust - threats - etc etc. until the sentence reached the 10 years for someone who had done something very extreme.
So someone pleading guilty who would have got say a 2 year sentence max - could end up with a judge giving him a 4 year sentence discounted to 2 years : and the accused walks away with the SAME sentence as he would have got before - this is the problem when sentencing is left up to a JUDGE and they can vary wildly in what sentences they give. The appeal court is full of appeals about sentences that are either too long or too short - and though they sometimes change the sentences they dont often cut them in half even if there is a good case.
For instance we see some people allowed NO SENTENCE for things like rape and manslaughter sometimes - which sounds crazy but the judges can use mitigating circumstances. Such as in the case of the 11 year old boys.
In fact lets take them as an example. They were facing LONG SENTENCES for their crime. If they had pleaded guilty then they would now have been in a Young Offenders Prison rather than the way their sentence has been organised. They would have not have benefited at all from pleading guilty.......
So it is swings and roundabouts - and what sounds good on paper is often not good in practice because of the complicated nature of UK Justice and its very complex sentencing guidelines which basically do no more than confuse anybody.
The law is an ass.
I would scrap all prison sentences except for MURDER and VIOLENT RAPE. Empty the prisons and put the £15 billion into working with the 200,000 repeat offenders in society.
For people with jobs - then if they committed a crime and there was evidence it would be dealt with at the time instantly with FINES to cover costs and to add to the Justice pot. Non payment of fines would lead to other sanctions - but not prison because Prison costs too much these days nearly £50,000 a year for each prisoner - that is far too much to spend when we dont spend even a fraction of that on our Young People and our OAPs and most people earn an average wage of under £25,000 a year.
£50,000 to spend on a prisoner for a year's sentence is only worth it if that person has murdered someone or raped someone or been extremely violent or robbed above the value of their sentence.
The system is crazy - and it is YOU AND ME who pay for it through the massive taxation burden that NEW LABOUR have created. There was less than 40,000 people in prison under Maggie Thatcher - and she was meant to be tough on criminals - now we have over 85,000 in prison because it is used to house mentally ill people and immigrants and those with learning difficulties as well as loads of innocent people.
If crime was falling then our prisons would be emptier now than they have ever been. That is the LIE of New Labour.
Numerous more "historical" convictions in today's papers - it is such an easy way to bounce up the success statistics without any evidence at all.
Satan's ultimate weapon of mass destruction.
Historical convictions are not "safe" - so I cant see how they can keep up this production line of ignoring real crime and chasing older people on the say so of compensation seekers and revengeful people who want to ruin someone's life. By their very nature Sex Offenders CONTINUE to offend and usually would get worse as their life went on because they would be more desperate for it - as has been proved time and time again on documentaries. Therefore, historical cases from 20 or 30 years ago with NOTHING in between have to be suspect from the word go. Someone just does not STOP being a Sex Offender - it is impossible according to the research.
The Courts should demand proper evidence for these cases. It is as simple as that. Until they do we have a system in the UK which is entirely corrupt. The REAL paedos like those who abused HOLLIE GREIG carry on without any case against them despite REAL evidence whilst innocent people are lined up by the state as JK says for "crime statistics" but also to "cover up" the fact that the State does not prosecute itself for the organised Child Abuse rings which exist at the top of our society and which most people are aware of their existence - just go on Facebook and search and you will find loads of families who know about these rings - but when they report them and their own children being abused they get harassed by the state. This is happening EVERY DAY out there. Shocking.
Good point BR - when I was originally arrested, the police searching my house neither opened, examined or took away any of my computers. When they searched again some months later, still they ignored my computers.
I asked my legal team why this was and they said it was because they knew I was not an abuser and examination of my computers would - by finding nothing - have damaged their case.
I thought that was a very important aspect. Surely "Is he still at it?" is the question they would under any normal circumstances have asked.
Indeed as a member of society it would be the crucial one.
Virtually ALL historic allegation convictions have no more recent offences produced or discovered. That simply does not ring true.
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