Future controversial legislation

[alitalf]

Now the IVF and so on vote has happened without major changes resulting, I think next of the oncoming attempt to raise the limit for imprisonment without charge to 42 days.

It seems to me that if you can't find enough evidence, in 28 days, to take to a court and make the case for custody while a case is prepared, the chance of finding it in 42 days is not much improved.

Actually, I would hope that in most cases, it would not take much over a week to prepare reasons for a court to order further detention. If someone has been arrested and imprisoned, you would think that there was a reason. If the reason is so bad that it cannot be presented to a court, even after a week or two of finding extra facts and correlating them, I would begin to doubt that the person should have been arrested. Twenty eight days should allow more than enough time to show a court that there is reason to believe that there is a case to be tried.

I can think of logical reasons for wanting the increase, but the ones I think of are not ones I like. It could be just to make it easier - so that the police can take their time. Clearly, for the guilty person who will be found guilty by a court, the period of imprisonment before trial does not make a huge difference.

For the person who will ultimately not be charged, maybe because they have done nothing wrong for there to be any evidence of, it is significant. For anyone, there must be a time in prison after which employment possibilities are lost, relationships cannot be fully repaired, and it may be increasingly unlikely their home will still be available for them to return to. For some, the damage done in 28 days could take a lot of repairing, but you try to get 42 days leave from work starting right now and still have a job available when you return (probably half way to being a nervous wreck).

Another logical reason that I like even less is that it could make a great way to inconvenience a political opposition deemed to be too extreme, in the run-up to an election.

It may be necessary to imprison suspects for long periods while evidence is gathered and a case prepared, but if there is not a good enough reason to take to a court and get an order for custody for a specific amount of time in custody after 28 days of detention, I would be worried that the reasons could be spurious. I would prefer that after less than 28 days, in order to continue to hold someone, reasons should be presented to a court, and the court should agree to further custody. Without that positive protection, abuses will surely take place more often than with the protection.

Comments

[muuranker.livejournal.com]

It seems to me (based almost entirely on watching and reading detective stories!) that there are some kinds of cases where gathering the evidence can be extremely time-consuming in terms of the distance between 'we are fairly sure you did it' and 'this is going to stand up in court.

These are cases where key witnesses (often victims, too) are children or vulnerable adults. Cases where people have used computers in very clever ways (major international fraud, for example). And cases where scientific tests are needed which do, indeed, in some cases, take a long time.


But how many people need to be locked away while the evidence is gathered?

And for the few who _do_ pose a threat to society (if they are indeed abusers, or fraudsters, or whatever), and/or who cannot be monitored well enough to prevent them from being brought to trial in due course, and/or may influence the investigation or prosecution to such an extent that they may compromise it, surely the solution is to allow the police to present evidence of the threat to society, the monitoring risk, and threat to due process together with the reasons why it is taking them a little longer than usual, in this case, to one or three people who know the law, and have looked at this kind of situation on a number of cases ... let us call them judges.

Yes, the judges will make mistakes. A person who has tortured elderly people, stolen billions, or murdered his mum IS going, one of these days, to go back and torture those same people again, dash off to somewhere with no extradition, or murder the witnesses .... but the risk x harmful effects of that happening seems to balance in the right direction against the risk x harmful effects of extended imprisonment of the less-than-guilty.

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

Certainly my preference would be to have, say, a panel of three, or even five, judges to approve long periods of detention. There may not yet be a case ready to take to court, but there has to be a reason why the police want to keep someone in custody, and that reason should be evaluated independently.

I seem to remember that someone held under the prevention of terrorism act can request a lawyer and request a hearing, but that is the wrong way round and too open to abuse.