MarijuanaNews.com : The UK Criminal Justice System Is “In Chaos.” Prisons Full. More Reasons Cannabis Prohibition Must End.

Posted June 17, 2002
(MarijuanaNews note: I am spending a lot of time on UK
stories because that is where the key battle is being waged over cannabis
prohibition. The Dutch coffee shop system is secure in The Netherlands.
See
Is the Dutch Coffee Shop
System In Danger ? European Elections and the Future of Cannabis Reform.
Analysis by Richard Cowan

However, the impact on French cannabis policies following the overwhelming
victory by the center -right in yesterday’s elections is not yet clear. The
right is also expected to win in the German elections in September, so this
makes the UK situation all the more important.
There is no mention of cannabis in this article, but the inescapable
implication of this story is that cannabis prohibition is an even more
outrageous absurdity in this context.

Next month, despite opposition from some narks, quacks and hacks, David
Blunkett, the Home Secretary, is expected to reclassify cannabis to make simple
possession a non-arrestable offense.
See
The Cannabis Section of
the Home Affairs Select Committee’s Report. Intellectually Embarrassing, but
Politically Useful. “The time has come for the international treaties to be
reconsidered.”

In the meantime, the police are planning to extend the Lambeth/Brixton
experiment of just issuing warnings to people found with cannabis, and
confiscating their weed, rather than arresting them.

See
If The Best Two Word
Explanation for Cannabis Prohibition Is “Bad Journalism,” The Best 3 Word
Explanation Is “Quack, Quack, Quack.” — Wholesale Malpractice In UK As Lambeth
Experiment Spreads.

The stated reason for this experiment was to free up police and court
resources to deal with serious crime. It seems to have been very successful in
that regard.

See
Crime Declined Sharply
London Area With De Facto Decrim. The Narks Caught In Yet Another Lie. Surprise!
Surprise!

However, the problems with the UK criminal justice system are so great that
one anonymous government minister was quoted as saying that it is “not a system
at all.” In December, Blunkett accused the police of failing the public with the
“appallingly low” detection and conviction rates.

Most of the UK papers have had some sort of story about
the Audit Commission’s latest report, but none seem to have grasped its full
implications.

Of course, none of these papers, including those who have editorialized in
favor of legalization of cannabis, bothered to comment on the fact that Colin
Davies was held in Strangeways prison for six months without bail. His trial is
scheduled for next week, and that is just one more waste of resources and a
further burden on the UK’s criminal injustice non-system.

See
UK Update: Committee to
Recommend De Facto Decrim Tomorrow. Dutch Experience Still Open. Colin Davies
Free On Bail. Government Reluctant to Pay for GW’s Expensive Products? Analysis
by Richard Cowan

As we shall see the problems do not stop there.)

Excerpted From The Independent
Full article at

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=305783

June 16, 2002
http://news.independent.co.uk
Revealed: criminal justice in chaos
Shock figures show just 326,000 convicted for 5.2 million
crimes
By Sophie Goodchild, Home Affairs Correspondent

Millions of crimes are going unpunished each year and tens of millions of
pounds spent in the justice system are being wasted, according to a damning
report from the Government’s spending watchdog.

The Audit Commission will reveal tomorrow that only 326,000 offenders were
convicted between 2000 and 2001 despite police recording 5.2 million offences.
Around £80m is wasted each year through adjournments and cancellations of
trials.
See
And Now, How the
Narks Created Crack In the UK. Britain Leads EU In Cocaine Consumption and Is
Now Having A Crack Epidemic. Will They Be Too Busy Busting Coffee Shops To Go
After Crack Houses?

The figures show a criminal justice system in chaos with “delays and
inefficiencies throughout the process” and “cases dropping out of the system
unnecessarily, allowing offenders to evade justice”.

The report, which demands “radical change”, comes amid new worries over
rising crime rates. Reports last night said the Government
is set to publish figures showing a 6 per cent increase in the number of
offences in England and Wales in the year to March 2002 the biggest rise for a
decade. The increase is being driven by a sharp rise in burglaries and street
muggings.

Tony Blair has already pledged to make crime reduction a priority. This week,
he will be a key speaker at a London conference on modernising criminal justice,
organised by the Metropolitan Police and the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation.

(MarijuanaNews note: Ah, the Brits do have a great sense of humor! They are
being advised by the FBI at a time when the organization is in disgrace at home
in DEAland. Will they have the CIA advise them on their intelligence system?

See
Did The Drug War
Claim Another 3,056 Casualties On 9-11? Ariana Huffington’s Extraordinary
Indictment.

Maybe Enron executives can teach a class in business ethics. Bill Clinton
could lecture on chastity. George W. Bush could give lectures on… well, never
mind.)

Mr Blair is expected to tell delegates at the conference that too many
criminals are evading justice. He will also call for defendants’ past
convictions to be made available to juries if relevant.

The report will again put pressure on the Government to bring forward a radical
overhaul of the criminal justice system expected in a White Paper next month.

(MarijuanaNews note: Blair has said that he is committed to reducing street
crime by the end of September. They are having some success at that, but it is
being done in part by neglecting traffic laws and highway safety is suffering.)

“The pendulum has swung too far in favour of the defendant,” said a senior
Home Office source. “We appreciate that their rights need to be upheld but so do
victims’. More needs to be done to speed up the criminal justice process.”…

Sir John Stevens, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said the
statistics showed the system was “creaking” under the volume of crimes and court
cases.

(MarijuanaNews note: The same is true of the UK prisons.
In May it was reported that the prisons were already overcrowded by more than
6,000, as its “certified normal accommodation” is 63,660. The operational
capacity - the maximum safe level - is 71,834.

Since the Blair government came to power in 1997, the prison population has
increased by more than 10,000. It has jumped by 3,000 since the start of the
year and by 5,000 in the past 12 months. Ten years ago, the number locked up was
43,000.

There are now 124 inmates in British jails and prisons for every 100,000
members of the population, the second highest per capita rate in western Europe
after Portugal, which recently moved to decriminalize possession of all drugs.
[Unfortunately, Portugal continues to keep cannabis in the same black market as
hard drugs.]

Of course, the UK per capita prison population is far less than that of
DEAland, which has almost 700 per hundred thousand in jails and prisons.

The Dutch, by contrast, have only 77 per hundred thousand.

In August of 2001 the “Justice” Department reported that the DEAland
correctional population — meaning those behind bars, on probation or on parole
– had reached a new high in 2000.
One out of every 32 adults in the United States was behind bars, on
probation or released on parole. The correctional population grew by 117,400 in
2000, to 6.3 million men and women, that is 3.1 percent of the U.S. adult
population.
The study by the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics said that as of
Dec. 31, 2000, there were 3,839,532 men and women on probation, 725,527 on
parole, 1,312,354 in prison and 621,149 in local jails. During the past decade,
the total correctional population increased 49 percent.

From 1998 see
Drug
War Prison Bonanza - By Kevin Nelson — Outstanding Report!

So while the situation in the UK is disastrous by European standards, it is
far better than that in DEAland, but the Brits are having the FBI lecture on
modernising criminal justice. We couldn’t make this up.)