Wednesday, March 12, 2008 

Sun-watch: If hospitals cure, then prisons must bring their pain.

After the last post, I might seem something approaching a hypocrite on this. After defending Fiona MacKeown, I might well be seen as attacking others in a similar position, in this case Helen Newlove, Linda Bowman and Kerry Nicol. The difference is that people like Fiona MacKeown and others such as Doreen Lawrence have not had justice served. All the other three have.

My question therefore is: what more can we possibly do for you? The state has bent over backwards, as it quite rightly should have done, found those that killed your relatives, and sentenced them to them to more or less the sentences that I think a majority would agree were the right ones. Sad, dreadful and unconscionable as it is, and my sympathies are with you, but how are we meant to stop an individual like Steven Wright, who showed no previous signs of being capable of killing the five prostitutes he did from doing so again? How are we meant to prevent those like Mark Dixie from living out their perverse fantasies unless we take incredibly harsh and some would say over the top action against others for offences such as his apparent masturbating in front of a woman? The crime that befell Helen Newlove's husband was the one that perhaps had the most chance of being prevented, but again, what sort of deterrent can be put in place that would have possibly stopped the gang that kicked him to death and made them think twice about what they were doing while they were drunk out of their skulls, and remember, when Swellings was old enough to buy alcohol legally? No, he probably shouldn't have been released on bail, but how can we possibly deny bail to all those accused of an assault? It would be a ridiculous use of state resources.

They've unveiled then their ten-point plan in the Sun for sorting out Broken Britain, and amazingly, it looks almost exactly the same as the Sun's prescribed diagnosis has for a long time (excepting capital punishment, which it claims to be against):

1 - Reintroduce the death penalty

2 - Set up compulsory DNA database

3 - Zero tolerance for minor crimes

4 - Repeal the Human Rights Act

5 - More bobbies on (blank) (presumably the beat?)

6 - Make parents responsible for their kids and restore discipline at home

7 - Victims' family's rights to be put above those of offenders with an end to ludicrous defences

8 - Juveniles to be named in court like adults

9 - Reserve plans to turn off street lights to save energy

10 - A crackdown on binge drinking

And what can I, or indeed anyone possibly say to this sort of mentality?:

LINDA: I’d love to watch Sally Anne’s killer get the death penalty. I want to see him suffer until he is squealing like a pig.

HELEN: I would be the one who puts the noose around the neck or presses the button for the lethal injection. And hangings should be public. People have stopped me and said they’re 100 per cent behind it.

This country is a terrifying place. No one is safe. I’m not ranting and raving. Come and sit here with us three and have the pain we’ve got.


Newlove is of course right. This is about pain. The natural reaction is to respond to pain inflicted upon you with pain towards the person that did so. The role of the government however cannot be to respond to pain inflicted upon individuals with state-sponsored pain, or at least not of the actual physical reality. Hangings should be made public? Has Newlove seen the photographs from Iran or Saudi Arabia of capital punishment being carried out in public? If it's meant to be for the deterrent purpose, then those grinning or celebrating the deaths of those condemned as they're killed certainly don't seem to be frightened by the prospect of the same happening to them if they were to commit a similarly heinous crime. Similarly silly statements are also made:

THE SUN:What do you see as the main cause of Broken Britain?

LINDA: The day the Government took discipline away from parents is the day this country went to pot.


When was that exactly? Perhaps we can pinpoint it so we can apportion blame to the right political party.

The most excruciating part is when the Sun asks them what it means to lose their loved ones in such a way. The grief, emotion and pain that is welled up inside these women at what has befallen them is not just real, it's visceral, terrifying even and incredibly powerful with it. The Sun knows this, and knows also that their anger cannot be answered by anyone, let alone a mere mortal such as a politician. I've said before that I was glad that Newlove was letting the hurt inside her out; that it was the best thing to do. Now I'm not so sure. It instead looks like the Sun is using these women for its own purposes, knowing full well that their pain will not be sated while they're still being asked for how it feels and when their hate is being directed not towards healing themselves and their families because of what has happened, but rather at not just their relatives' killers, but also British society as it is in their eyes at the moment. As patronising or cliched as it may sound, they need to come to terms with what has happened to them in their own time, in private, and then decide if they still feel the same way. The Sun is preventing them from doing so.

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3/12/2008 10:41:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 25, 2008 

Scum-watch: A lesson in attempting to puncture its own emotional balloon.

It's interesting, these days, watching the Sun (No, please, come back!). Last year after the failed patio gas canister bombings it clearly didn't have the slightest idea how to respond to them: first with hackneyed blitz spirit type defiance; then scaremongering, and the resurrection of its demands to scrap the human rights act; and finally, resorting to patriotism, ordering everyone to fly the flag. This remember is the paper which over the 80s and up until recently was often considered the weathervane of the nation, or symbolic of how a majority of how it was responding, typified by how when it changed from supporting the Conservatives to New Labour that it was considered the final, death blow against John Major.

Since then of course we've had the online revolution; now the most visited UK newspaper website is the loony-left Guardian, closely followed by the Mail Online. Circulations continue to plunge, with the Sun recently slipping below the 3 million mark, only rising back above it because of price cutting. The real success story of today is the Daily Mail, and by far the most despicable, distorted press coverage of late, directed at asylum seekers and immigrants, has come not from the Sun but from the Express and Mail. Whether it's because the Sun's reflecting society at large or not, or that it's lost its way as the country has become more liberal and has tried but failed to follow, it no longer has the zest or vim that it had under Kelvin MacKenzie's editorship, as rabid as that was in places. The rot set in under David Yelland, the most memorable of his front pages one asking Tony Blair whether we were being run by a gay mafia, and Rebekah Wade, most notable beforehand for her "name and shame" campaign against paedophiles on the News of the World, has done little to change that.

Even so, it's surprising that it's been so surprised by the vehemence of the response to its call for a debate on capital punishment. For years it's been claiming without the slightest amount of evidence that judges are liberal loonies, that crime is getting worse while the figures suggest the opposite and that the criminal justice system is failing us all. The result of this campaign for "toughness", led not just by it but by the other right-wing tabloids also, is both obvious and apparent; our prisons are now so full that there is little to no room whatsoever left in them. Of late, the rallying cry has been against binge drinking and youth, or rather "yob" violence. This was crystallised by the death of Garry Newlove, a loving, caring father kicked to death by 3 teenagers who had drank large amounts of strong alcohol and smoked cannabis beforehand. It's one of those cases, like the murder of Rhys Jones, that pushes the press into a familiar period of soul-searching of how we've reached this lowest-collective ebb. The reality is of course that it's an aberration, a terrible crime that is thankfully very rare. Nonetheless, it gave the Sun and Newlove's loving widow, an opportunity: both want change, but for very different reasons. The Sun wants improved sales and to be able to crow about changing government policy, as well increasing its own influence; Newlove wants vengeance and for her husband's death to not be in vain. Newlove, along with a shopping list of other demands, clearly stated how she longed to be able to personally execute the 3 boys who killed her husband. Never mind that even in most American states it would have been highly unlikely they would have been sentenced to death because the crime wasn't premeditated, and that perhaps only in such freedom loving countries as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran would such a punishment have taken place, the Sun at the time didn't speak up and say that it was personally against capital punishment. It did all it could to encourage a grieving, deeply hurt woman to keep going.

Then, in quick succession, we've had other troubling murder cases, which due to their own individual circumstances have caught the public's attention, or at least certainly the media's. In Steve Wright's, because he murdered 5 prostitutes with no apparent motive, not even a sexual one, and was apparently not mentally ill; and Mark Dixie's, in that he stalked and killed a beautiful 18-year-old aspiring model, who had a whole string of portfolio photographs that the media could splash all over their pages. Today Levi Bellfield was convicted of the murders of two young women, and suspected, like the previous two, of having potentially killed before. While the relatives of Bellfield's victims haven't spoken out yet, it won't be much of a surprise if they too, like the next of kin of those killed by Wright and the mother of Sally Anne Bowman, Dixie's victim, suggest that they would also like to see the return of the ultimate penalty.

The Sun on Saturday then, presumably because of the response on its talkboards which are usually filled with individuals not always residing in this country demanding the restoration of capital punishment, set up an actual poll asking whether readers would like to see hanging back. The response seems on the surface to be overwhelming, and despite the Sun personally coming out against it. 99% of 95,000 wanted it brought back, according to their you the jury poll. The poll result is of course questionable; you can vote multiple times on the online poll, and doubtless can on the actual phone lines too. Even if you consider that it is a seemingly massive response, the Sun has over 3 million sales, which means that 3% of its readers' responded and want it back. The Sun also claims to have an actual readership of 8 million, meaning that the figure goes even lower when you factor that in.

Despite its past polls returning similar overwhelming results, the paper in this case genuinely seems taken aback by the response. The question has to be: why? Its attitude to crime has always been leading towards such a policy, even if it actually balks at the possibility. I very much doubt it's because polls that are representatively sampled suggest around 60% or lower (albeit from a few years' ago) are usually in favour of capital punishment being brought back, with even only 65% of Tory voters wanting hanging to return; rather, it's because it's greatly perturbed that its readers aren't hanging off their every editorial word. The Sun is, first and foremost, pure propaganda, and it expects its line to be swallowed. Secondly, it almost seems worried that it can't control what it's started off.

As Tim Ireland writes, it almost seems as if the paper is trying to control the mob it set in motion. Wade couldn't do it when she named and shamed paedophiles and a paediatrician ended up being hounded out; how on earth could she manage it now? In any case, she's making an attempt: as well as listing all the relatives of victims who want capital punishment back, the paper remarks on how Sara Payne, one of those whose line in criminal justice policy based purely on her own experience as a victim has been pushed relentlessly in the paper, doesn't want it back. It points out how Pierrepoint didn't believe that it was a deterrent (although Wikipedia asks whether this was just a selling tactic for his book), without mentioning how he, merciful and humane despite his role as executioner, was only interested in making sure that the end for the person being put to death was as painless and quick as possible, something at odds with many of those calling for its return, who clearly want those put to death to suffer. It even says that the hated Germans brought hanging to this country, almost as if wanting to put its readers off it by its pure heritage; the page 3 girl, the paper's purest piece of propaganda, asks for life to mean life rather than for capital punishment; and only two of the Sun's gor blimey commentators, both of them the loathsome talk radio hosts Jon Gaunt and Fergus Shanahan, want it back.

Today's leader column is extraordinary therefore for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I agree with large parts of it, which is almost a first; secondly, because of its sheer flaming hypocrisy:

THE clamour for the death penalty is deafening.

Some 99 per cent of 100,000 voters in our poll demand its return.

Such an overwhelming response is no surprise after the killings of Garry Newlove, Sally Anne Bowman and the five Suffolk Strangler victims. Not to mention the anarchy that has erupted in some parts of Britain.

No one reading the heart-rending interviews with any of the victims’ families could fail to understand their desire for the ultimate revenge. Most of us share it.

But The Sun does not believe in capital punishment. It will not be brought back on a wave of public emotion, however much we sympathise with it.

Emotion cannot dictate a nation’s system of punishment

Yet that is exactly what it has wanted by giving over so much space to Helen Newlove and others. Helen Newlove claims in her own case for why it should be brought back that it isn't about revenge or vengeance - yet anyone reading her demands and frankly chilling account of how she'd like to execute her husband's killers couldn't fail to realise that was exactly the motive on which she was acting. Emotion or revenge cannot possibly even begin to be a part of any justice system which is going to attempt to be fair - yet by not pointing that out forcefully enough the Sun has failed those that it's given such succour to.

This is the Sun's main argument for what should take capital punishment's place - and it's just as flawed as capital punishment itself is:

Demands for capital punishment are only so strong because the justice system fails at every turn.

Too few police. Too few arrests. Too few offenders being locked away because there are too few jails and, scandalously, they were allowed to become too full.

Too few judges taking public safety seriously.

And far too many serious offenders whose “life” terms mean nothing of the kind.


Except we've got almost the most police ever. How can you possibly say too few offenders are locked away when there's currently 82,000 in prison and we are among the most heavy users of prison as punishment in Europe? Yes, the jails are too full, but that's not just the fault of the government but of the very same newspapers that have demanded ever tougher punishments, got them, and then demanded even harsher sentences. The very reason we're currently at bursting point is because when we have these sporadic bursts of draconian sentiment the judges are inclined to send those they might have previously fined or put on a community order to prison. They're reflecting what is apparently public opinion, even if polls now suggest that the country is split equally over whether more prisons are the answer. Judges are doing their very best in difficult circumstances; and "life" terms are usually about right. Learco Chindamo perhaps should have got more than 12 years, yet when the evidence suggests that he is a rare success story of prison actually working beyond just locking the dangerous away, he gets attacked, the victim of his crime is given centre stage to voice her disgust, and the demands for tougher sentences grow once again. Who could disagree with Dixie being sentenced to over 30 years, meaning he'll be 70 and a danger to no one if he is eventually to be released? Wright's sentence was also the right one, as was mostly the ones given to Newlove's killers. Life should only ever mean life where this is no chance whatsoever of redemption, or in the case of someone committing multiple murders. Despite common belief, life sentences have never meant life in this country, and the time served for a life sentence has actually continued to rise since the abolition of capital punishment. Believe it or not, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who thinks this, our current justice system model gets it about right. The occasional cases where it either gets it wrong, with both miscarriages of justice and with those who either get away with it or kill again needed to be taken into consideration, are relatively few.

The most true and again, also line which contains the most chutzpah on the Sun's behalf in this one:

Revenge is the real motivation behind the calls for the return of capital punishment. That’s not enough in a civilised society.

And who knows just how the average supporter of capital punishment will take to being spoken to in such a tone by the "reactionary" Sun newspaper?

Related post:
Impotent Fury - Tabloid legislation - why do we bother having a government?

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2/25/2008 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, February 23, 2008 

Bizarro tabloid world.

There were calls last night for the abolition of calling for the abolition of the death penalty to be overturned after the latest horrific murder case to shock Britain reached its conclusion. As the killer of Sylvia Miller was sentenced to life imprisonment, her mother Edith Miller spoke out to reporters.

"Actually, I feel that justice has been done. It's unlikely that my daughter's killer will ever be released, and although I can never forgive or forget the immense pain he's caused to our family by taking away our beautiful daughter, I also don't see what putting him to death will achieve. I believe in justice, not vengeance, and I also don't believe that even if we had the death penalty it would have made him think twice before doing what he did."

In another surprise development, the police said that they were actually completely satisfied with the way the DNA database was currently working, and that they saw neither the need to extend it to encompass the entirety of Britain's population or to take samples from children as soon as they're pulled out of the womb. "Doing so would surely be one of the first steps towards a true police state, where you're presumed guilty until proved innocent," said PC Politically Correct, who then went off to inspect his recently delivered politically correct brigade new squad car. "Instead of being equipped with a loud, noisy siren, this new vehicle is instead fitted with an ice cream van's music player, which is intermittently interrupted with the word "police" whispered lightly so as not to disturb anyone," said the officer (cont. page 94)

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2/23/2008 08:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, December 30, 2006 

Scum-watch: Saddammed.

The Sun is utterly ecstatic with the death of Saddam Hussein. Following on from celebrating the deaths of other mass murderers, such as Harold Shipman (SHIP SHIP HOORAY was the following day's front page headline) the Sun printed a "3 AM NEWS SPECIAL" which screams "SADDAM HANGED - Iraq butcher sent to hell". Previous editions had used puns based around "OGRE" having used up "SADDAMMED TO HELL" when he was first sentenced.


The website meanwhile advertises the "Amazing" first picture from his execution. It's not amazing - the image instead conveys the banal, less than extraordinary reality of a man about to have his life taken from him. If anything, the video of his final moments is remarkable for its similarity to the tapes released by Zarqawi et al - the denouement may not be as brutal, bloody, sadistic or shocking, Saddam may have been convicted by a court of law - yet the rough edges and the general lack of humanity are still evident in both.




As could also be expected, the Sun leader does its best to justify the execution:

NO ONE should lose any sleep over Saddam going to the gallows.

A few bleeding hearts have managed to protest at his sentence — but without much conviction.

As Prime Minister Tony Blair has pointed out, this country stands against capital punishment anywhere.

But WE haven’t been under the heel of a murderous dictator for nearly three decades.

WE don’t know what it’s like to see members of our families disappear in the night.

Or witness tens of thousands of our fellow countrymen put to death.

The fate of Saddam was sensibly left in the hands of the Iraqis.

It’s no surprise they decided to put a noose round his neck.

It would be worth pointing out that we also weren't subjected to sanctions for 13 years that resulted in the deaths of a possible 500,000 children, a statistic which former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright said was worth it. Our houses also haven't been under threat for 16 years from the skies, with us not knowing whether the night might result in our families being vapourised by good-faith US/UK bombers, who have always only wanted to remove the Butcher of Baghdad and help the Iraqi people. One death should never justify another. As Stalin pointed out, one death is a tragedy, but a million is a statistic.

Juan Cole and David Hirst, in his exemplary obituary of Saddam, have also pointed out examples of how we stood by and watched, only intervening when Saddam threatened "our" interests.

The Sun is right however in its main point that there should be no sleep lost for Saddam. I very much doubt there will be. I challenge anyone though not to admit to feeling at least uncomfortable watching the pictures of the man having the noose placed around his neck, even though we have been spared his dropping through the scaffold. Not to feel at least some pang of pity or another emotion is surely down either to comprehensive desensitisation or a general lack of humanity, whatever the person being executed is responsible for.

Elsewhere, the Sun yesterday continued its campaign of pointing out the foibles of "our Muslim community" which Osama Saeed excellently puts into context.

Happy new year!

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12/30/2006 07:54:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, December 29, 2006 

Give him the respect he deserves?

I wonder who you think you are
You damn well think you're God or something
God give life, God taketh it away, not you
I think you are the Devil itself
Manic Street Preachers, Archives of Pain.
One of the finest and most controversial songs that Richey Edwards wrote for the Manic Street Preachers' Holy Bible album shortly before he disappeared, Archives of Pain, always comes into my thoughts when I consider the rights and wrongs of capital punishment. Although Edwards intended it as pro-capital punishment, whether those were his beliefs or not, the lyrics themselves are ambiguous enough for it to be taken either way, potentially an attack on those who believe in vengeance for its cleansing, wiping the slate clean nature, while also making a reasonably compelling case exactly for that. After all, wouldn't it have been so much easier for Myra Hindley and Ian Brady to have met their maker for their crimes instead of spending the next almost forty years in prison, respectively yearning to be released and to die? Does anyone truly pay full penance, let alone regret their crimes by spending decades in prison? At the same time, the belief that executing those who have killed somehow solves everything is both a false one, and one which potentially opens the state itself to accusations that it is no better than the murderer themselves.

I admit, despite all these conflicting arguments, to be an anti-capital punishment fundamentalist. It may be because I have never suffered any serious crime, or had one happen to my relatives that I see almost no merit in seeking physical revenge for any slight committed against me. Sure, I hold grudges. I enjoy schadenfreude as much as the next person. I would like nothing better than to see the likes of Fred Phelps, Richard Littlejohn or Mazher Mahmood for example, to get their deserved comeuppance for the hate, lies and fear they've expressed time and again. Yet for them to be killed or seriously injured, rather than just suffer mentally for a short while, or to see the other side of the story that they so ignore is something that I could never condone. I'd love to see Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden answer for their crimes and murderous preaching in a court of law. For them to be blown apart by a laser-guided missile would be poetic justice, but not the kind of justice I could agree with when they could have been captured instead.

So it is with Saddam Hussein. As rumours that his execution is due to take place within hours reach fever pitch, there's a feeling that everything would have been so much easier if the Iraqi people could have beaten him to death with their shoes just like they did his pictures and his statues when the resistance to the US/UK invasion collapsed. Instead, what we've been left with is a deeply flawed trial, which in the circumstances may well have been the best that could have expected, but has not helped Iraq either come together or entirely fall apart. The brutal fact is that life in Iraq now is so much less secure that the imminent demise of their former dictator is unlikely to affect anything at all in the long run; it will raise cheers in the Shia districts for sure, potentially further antagonise the remaining Ba'athists and remnants of the Sunni community which refuse to involve themselves in the governing of the country, but in the long run, nothing is going to be inexorably changed by his death.

Why then is his trip to the gallows so urgent, not counting the legal strictures that have been set down? Why could the other trials still going on or yet to be held not continue to take place? Saddam himself has showed little to no contrition; his apparent suggestion that he and only he should be held accountable for what happened in Dujali was the only thing that has come anywhere close to either an admittance of wrong-doing or an apology. As predicted, Saddam has also prepared the ground for his death to be seen as a martyrdom. Whether this will be accepted by those who opposed him while he was in power as a nationalist socialist is uncertain, but in years to come the nuances may yet fade and appeal to a youth growing up hating America and the West and looking to find someone as a potential hero who did die for the cause, bin Laden and his henchmen not being prepared to sacrifice themselves when they can send their followers instead.

It's not too late for the death sentence to be converted to life imprisonment. This would enable the other trials to finish, perhaps crouched in a more amenable way that adheres to international law, and for full justice for all those who died at the hands of his regime to be served. Who knows, perhaps a truly democratic and free Iraq, one not marred by sectarian bloodshed may yet one day emerge while he remains alive, the one thing that would show that his reign was an illegitimate and brutal aberration that will not be repeated, breaking the man himself. Idealistic and not crouched in realism this may be, but what's wrong with dreaming every once in a while?

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12/29/2006 06:47:00 PM | | | links to this post

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