Foreign secretary calls decision a ‘denial of justice’ and says UK would have acted differently
The foreign secretary has condemned the US decision to refuse an extradition request for the suspect charged with causing the death of Harry Dunn, saying the UK would have “acted differently”.
Harry Dunn died after a crash outside a US military base in Croughton, Northamptonshire, on 27 August 2019.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson is under renewed pressure to deal with the prisons crisis after it emerged that the chaotic conditions are behind a £30m-a-year bill for legal claims.
Figures obtained by the Observer reveal that the prison and probation service in England and Wales has paid out more than £85m over three years for issues such as attacks on staff and prisoners, lost and damaged property, accidental personal injury and delays to inmates being released.
Continue reading...Ewan Ireland, 17, had been released under investigation over an affray offence when he attacked Peter Duncan
The case of a teenager jailed for life after stabbing a lawyer to death has raised fresh alarm about the practice of releasing violent suspects without strict bail conditions.
Ewan Ireland was 17 when he attacked Peter Duncan in August. The sentencing judge said on Tuesday that it was the 52-year-old’s bad luck to accidentally bump into Ireland while trying to get home after work in Newcastle city centre.
Continue reading...Report calls for higher age of criminal responsibility and warns of legal aid ‘deserts’
Powers to control justice, policing and prisons should be devolved to the Welsh assembly as they are in Scotland and Northern Ireland, a commission led by the former lord chief justice of England and Wales has recommended.
In a strongly worded report on the justice system in Wales, a review chaired by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd calls for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to at least 12 years, says “advice deserts” are appearing due to cuts in legal aid, and condemns high imprisonment rates as unsustainable.
Continue reading...UK lawyers say more women are coming forward, but are police and prosecutors ready?
The clearest impact of the #MeToo movement on the British justice system has been a sharp rise in the number of complaints made to police of rape and sexual assault over the past two years.
That surge, however, has coincided with a chaotic response by police and prosecutors, who have been engulfed in problems over disclosure and allegations they have refined their approach to the crime in order to improve conviction rates, although this has been denied by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Continue reading...Heavier sentences for violent criminals among policies aimed at wooing Labour voters
Violent and sexual criminals as well as foreign national offenders who return to the UK will face drastically heavier penalties under measures that will form the centrepiece of a Queen’s speech aimed at wresting the agenda away from the delicate Brexit negotiations.
With just days to go before the deadline for Boris Johnson to clinch a last-ditch Brexit deal in Brussels, the Queen will on Monday set out his government’s priorities for a new session of parliament, including 22 new bills.
Continue reading...Police investigate unexplained death at Bronzefield women’s prison in Surrey
Police are investigating the death of a baby in Britain’s largest female prison after an inmate gave birth alone in her cell at night.
The Guardian understands that the woman, who had been at an advanced stage of pregnancy, gave birth alone in her cell in the early hours of Friday last week. A source with knowledge of the events said that when prison staff visited the woman’s cell on Friday morning the baby was unresponsive.
Continue reading...We learn to lie as children, between the ages of two and five. By adulthood, we are prolific. We lie to our employers, our partners and, most of all, one study has found, to our mothers. The average person hears up to 200 lies a day, according to research by Jerry Jellison, a psychologist at the University of Southern California. The majority of the lies we tell are “white”, the inconsequential niceties – “I love your dress!” – that grease the wheels of human interaction. But most people tell one or two “big” lies a day, says Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire. We lie to promote ourselves, protect ourselves and to hurt or avoid hurting others.
The mystery is how we keep getting away with it. Our bodies expose us in every way. Hearts race, sweat drips and micro-expressions leak from small muscles in the face. We stutter, stall and make Freudian slips. “No mortal can keep a secret,” wrote the psychoanalyst in 1905. “If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. Betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”
Continue reading...Report says police have only superficial understanding of crimes against older people
Older victims of crime are being let down by the police and the wider criminal justice system, according to the first inspection report on the age group.
The police have only a “superficial understanding” of the crimes committed against older people, the report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services and Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate says.
Continue reading...British home secretary says final decision on WikiLeaks founder is ‘now with the courts’
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has revealed he has signed a request for Julian Assange to be extradited to the US where he faces charges of computer hacking.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Javid said: “He’s rightly behind bars. There’s an extradition request from the US that is before the courts tomorrow but yesterday I signed the extradition order and certified it and that will be going in front of the courts tomorrow.”
Continue reading...Sally Challen was subjected to a false narrative by a criminal justice system that painted her as “a controlling and jealous lover who planned to kill her husband”, her son has said.
In doing so it failed to recognise the decades of abuse and coercive control she had suffered at his hands, David Challen writes in an article for today’s Observer that is heavily critical of how abused women continue to be viewed by the courts, a concern that women’s rights campaigners said they shared.
Continue reading...Court had agreed to return Hashem Abedi, younger brother of the bomber, to UK
Plans by Libya to extradite the brother of the Manchester Arena suicide bomber to Britain have been put on hold while Tripoli remains under attack, the country’s interior minister has said.
Fathi Bashagha said a Libyan court had agreed to return 21-year-old Hashem Abedi – the younger brother of the bomber Salman Abedi – because he was a British citizen.
Continue reading...UK foreign secretaries wrote to assure Ecuador president over WikiLeaks founder’s extradition
Ecuador’s president, Lenín Moreno, was assured by two British foreign secretaries that Julian Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face the death penalty, according to letters seen by the Guardian.
Letters signed by the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and his predecessor Boris Johnson, dated 7 March 2018 and 10 August 2018 respectively, confirm a person cannot be extradited if they could face the death penalty, according to British legislation.
Continue reading...Letters to Sajid Javid and Diane Abbott call for attention to focus on any Swedish case
Political pressure is mounting on Sajid Javid to prioritise action that would allow Julian Assange to be extradited to Sweden, amid concerns that US charges relating to Wikileaks’ activities risked overshadowing longstanding allegations of rape.
More than 70 MPs and peers have written to Javid and the shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, urging them to focus attention on the earlier Swedish investigations that Assange would face should the case be resumed at the alleged victim’s request.
Continue reading...Experts say Alesha’s killer, Aaron Campbell, is ‘not a one-off’ – and more can be done to prevent similar crimes
Since Aaron Campbell received a life sentence last month for the brutal rape and murder of six-year-old Alesha MacPhail, the reverberations from his crimes have continued as the public and professionals struggle to come to terms with what the trial judge, Lord Matthews, described as “some of the wickedest, most evil crimes this court has ever heard”.
Related: Why was Alesha MacPhail killed? Perhaps we should stop asking | Libby Brooks
Continue reading...Ministry of Justice says criminals are stuffing rodents with drugs and mobile phones
Related: ‘It’s not just you who does the jail sentence, it’s the whole family’ | Clare Horton
Criminal gangs are using dead rats to smuggle contraband material such as drugs and mobile phones into jail, the Prison Service has said.
Continue reading...Chair of inquiry ‘deeply disturbed’ by allegations from young offender institutions
Children in custody are still not safe from sexual abuse after more than 1,000 attacks were alleged from 2009 to 2017, a statutory inquiry has found.
Prof Alexis Jay, the chairwoman of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, said on Thursday she was deeply disturbed by what the inquiry found as it published a report that described the scale of alleged abuse in young offender institutions (YOIs) and secure training centres (STCs) as “shockingly high”.
Continue reading...Justice secretary says leaving EU without deal would have ‘very adverse effect’
The justice secretary has said he has grave concerns about the prospect of leaving the European Union without a deal, saying it would have a “very adverse effect” on the UK’s economy, security and union with Northern Ireland.
David Gauke said the government was planning for the contingency of no deal, but suggested he would support extending article 50 if a deal between the UK and EU was not reached, since a no-deal Brexit was not in the national interest. He added that he expected the government to act responsibly if the current deadlock prevailed.
Continue reading...Judges rule decision to share evidence with US without death penalty assurances not unlawful
The mother of an alleged hostage killer for Islamic State has lost her legal challenge against a Home Office decision to share evidence with the US without seeking assurances that her son and another suspected jihadist terrorist would not face the death penalty.
El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey are accused of belonging to a group of Isis members, nicknamed the Beatles because of their British accents, responsible for killing a number of western captives.
Continue reading...Prison population in 2017 was 154 per 100,000 in Wales, compared with 141 in England
Wales has the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe, the first study of its kind has revealed.
Sentencing and Immediate Custody in Wales: A Factfile found that in 2017 (the latest figures available) there were 154 prisoners per 100,000 of the population of Wales, compared with 141 per 100,000 of England.
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