MOJUK: Newsletter ‘Inside Out’ 73

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"But who Judges the Judges"

"For anyone in prison Christmas is a difficult time. Christmas in prison when you are innocent, is beyond description. Yet I will face it with the hope that next year will bring me justice and the courts will finally be forced to release me so that I can return home to my family who I dearly love and miss so much.

When I think back over the years about what has happened to me, a wave of emotions from anger to sadness engulfs me. I am amazed that the authorities have so far got away with it. I have spent all this time in prison for a crime that never was and yet the police are asking for more powers and the Home Secretary is more than willing to grant them. But the police already abuse the powers they already have, so by giving them more will only lead to more innocent people being convicted and their rights abused.

At my first appeal the judges refused to hear any criticism of the police or my former defence team despite their being an abundance of misconduct by both. At my second appeal the prosecution accepted that the pathologist who gave evidence at my trial could no longer be relied upon. The fresh pathology and the forensics had they been put before a jury would have led to me being proved innocent. However the appeal court judges were not interested in justice or the truth. When they gave their reasons for refusing my appeal they said the jury had heard certain evidence, which clearly the jury had not. They also said that I had said and done certain things. However, everyone else (including the prosecution) accepts that I did not say or do any of them. It was clear that they had no understanding of my case at all and were just hell bent on refusing my appeal in order to maintain the status quo in the system and to prevent awkward questions being asked of those responsible for putting me behind bars.

But who judges the judges. They are not accountable to anyone. Justice is not a search for the truth, if it was I would never have been charged and imprisoned. As you know I legally changed my name to "Innocent" Eddie Gilfoyle. Not as a gimmick to get attention, but because I thought the next time I go to the appeal court those that sit in judgement of my freedom, will have to one way or another, whether they like it or not, associate my name with that of "innocent".

I am innocent and always will be. My innocence is the one thing that the regime in prison cannot take from me and it is the one thing that keeps me going through the long days and nights. I am actually looking forward to next year. My legal team have been working hard and will be putting a new application to the CCRC. I am not without hope or expectation and remain strong in my fight for freedom and justice.

All I ask is that you also remain strong and never loose faith in the fact that the truth always comes out and when it does I will be free. Best wishes for the New Year and thank you all for your kindness and support."

Innocent Eddie Gilfoyle
HMP Wakefield
Love Lane
Yorks
WF2 9AG

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New Labour and new authoritarianism in criminal justice

By Lee Bridges:Lee Bridges, Chair of the School of Law at Warwick University, comments on the government's new Criminal Justice Bill. (re-printed here by kind permission of the Institute of Race Relations)

A government's authoritarianism is marked by the numbers of its citizens it imprisons. Under New Labour the prison population, already rising under the Tories, has soared to over 70,000, so high that even the prison governors - hardly a liberal lobby group - have called for the powers of magistrates to send people to prison to be curbed.

Yet, both in its rhetoric and in its numerous 'modernising' reforms of criminal justice, New Labour has done much to encourage the courts to send more and more people to prison. And it has been primarily in magistrates' courts that the government has found an enthusiastic response to its populist, law and order measures. Between 1989 and 1999 the number of people sent by magistrates to prison each year has risen nearly three-fold, from 18,200 to 53,000. In the same period, the number of prison sentences handed out by the Crown Court has increased only marginally, from 42,600 to 44,600.

Powers to magistrates
           Government ministers and officials frequently give voice to their distrust of judges, whom they see as soft on crime, as distinct from magistrates. Hence their drive to have more and more cases dealt with in magistrates' courts. Having failed in attempts to restrict the right of defendants to elect jury trial in many cases, the government has come up with a new wheeze. It will give magistrates greater powers of punishment, raising the maximum prison sentence they can give from 6 to 12 or 18 months. This will enable magistrates to deal with many of the over 50,000 cases they send to the Crown Court each year, primarily because they consider that the defendants deserve longer punishment than magistrates can give under their current powers.

In a majority of these cases that result in conviction, the Crown Court actually gives either a non-custodial sentence or one of 6 months or less - that is, what magistrates could have handed down in the first place. The implication must be that, if magistrates are given power to send more of these defendants to prison and for longer, they will do so. This is bound to lead to a further surge in the prison population.

These defendants will at least have had the opportunity of a trial, albeit a restricted one before magistrates. Other measures in the new crime bill will result in far more people being sent to prison without having been convicted by any court. In particular, it is planned to create a presumption that anyone who is arrested for a further offence while already on bail from a court awaiting trial, should be denied further bail. It is estimated that 100,000 defendants a year may be affected by this measure.

Police and summary punishment
             Another indicator of government authoritarianism is its willingness to abandon due process of law in favour of summary punishment. The bill contains provisions to allow the police to impose bail restrictions on anyone they arrest, even before they are charged and brought before a court.

This measure must be seen in the context of the recent rise in the use by the police - spurred on by the government's street crime initiative - of controversial stop-and-search powers, and of even greater black over-representation among those subjected to such treatment. Stop-and-search has long been used in inner city and black communities as a form of general, street-level surveillance and summary punishment, with just one in ten stops resulting in an arrest. But now the police will be able to combine this with more frequent arrests and the power to impose formal restrictions on individuals' liberty through bail conditions, possibly extending over several weeks or months.

In putting forward these measures, the government is in part admitting that its efforts over several years, to bring more of those involved in crime before the courts and to gain legitimate convictions, have failed. Hence the need to by-pass the formal court process and create summary forms of punishment.

Manipulation of court rules
          At the same time, New Labour is about to engage in a further round of manipulation of court rules so as to rig the system to ensure more people are convicted. New Labour has done nothing to reverse the Tory-created restrictions on defendants' right to silence. And it now plans further limitations which will force suspects into making statements - turning the police station into a virtual Star Chamber. Otherwise, their silence under police interrogation - or even a short delay in order to make a written statement following legal advice - will be taking as evidence of their guilt in court.

This will be combined with greater use of previous convictions by the prosecution. Research evidence has shown that while evidence of previous convictions can serve to prejudice juries, this is even more the case with magistrates.

State power over the individual
            All of this is supposedly being done in order to 'rebalance' the system more in favour of victims of crime. In reality, it is the state - the police, prosecution and courts (especially magistrates) - whose powers over individuals are being greatly increased. And it is precisely those communities that most suffer from crime - in the inner cities and on disadvantaged estates, where victims and those targeted as so-called 'persistent offenders' live side-by-side and often in the same families - that will now face the brunt of the new authoritarianism.

These communities are crying out for effective - but also fair and just - policing and criminal justice. What they are going to get is increasingly arbitrary use of state power which will only serve to further alienate them from a supposedly democratic society.

Provisions of the Bill

Police powers: new 'street bail' without taking suspect to station; detention without charge up to 36 hours

Pre-trial: CPS takes over charging from police, defence to make greater disclosure

Magistrates: sentencing powers increased from 6 to 12 or possibly 18 months

Previous conduct: previous convictions to be disclosed to jury where considered relevant by judge

Judge-only trials: judge-only trials in complex fraud and financial cases and where evidence exists of jury tampering or intimidation

Double jeopardy: to allow retrials in very serious cases with compelling new evidence - to be retrospective and apply to around 30 offences

Dangerous offenders: serious sexual or violent offenders assessed as dangerous to be subject to imprisonment for public protection or discretionary life sentence

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All convicted prisoners, still in prison to have DNA samples taken before release

Prisoners: DNA Samples: Hansard House of Commons; Thursday 16 Jan 2003

Baroness Hilton of Eggardon asked Her Majesty's Government: Whether they plan to take samples from prisoners whose DNA is not currently on the national DNA database.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton: The DNA expansion programme is a major government initiative that has been developed to enable the police to make maximum benefit of DNA in tackling crime. Home Office funding has been made available to enable the police to take DNA samples from all people cautioned or charged with a recordable offence and from as many crime scenes as possible. The database has already played a leading role in solving a large number of crimes.

A number of prisoners and mentally disordered offenders do not have DNA on the database as they were convicted before the DNA expansion programme enabled every offender to be DNA sampled. An exercise is now under way to identify those offenders without DNA on the database and to ensure that a sample is taken before they are released from prison or hospital. This prisoner DNA sampling programme is being run under the auspices of the existing DNA expansion programme.

A dedicated programme management team has been recruited and is developing plans to ensure that the majority of those without DNA profiles on the database do provide them by summer 2003. Centrally managed but regionally based teams of police officers working in close co-operation with prison and mental health establishments will ensure a speedy completion of the exercise with minimal impact on the establishments involved. The exercise will underpin the Home Office aims of reducing crime, increasing the efficiency of crime investigation and increasing successful prosecutions. If known offenders can be linked to their offences more often and more quickly, then we will be able to detect and deter more crime in the future and also improve victim reassurance and so contribute to reduction of the fear of crime.

The prisoner DNA sampling programme and the broader DNA expansion programme are clear examples of the use of science and technology to reduce crime and improve the effectiveness of the police. In the national policing plan, published recently, we state our commitment to ensure that the DNA database covers all known active offenders by 2004. (any comments on this send to MOJUK)

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Prisoners: Transfers

Subject to security considerations, prisoners are normally notified of their transfer in advance.

It is a mandatory requirement for prisoners to be allowed to make telephone calls immediately on reception to a new establishment so that they can inform their next of kin of their new location if they wish to do so. They also have access to telephones on each association period and may also ask prison staff to contact their next of kin on their behalf. In addition, there is provision for prisoners to be issued with special letters, over and above any statutory entitlement, which may be sent at public expense, either before or immediately after the transfer takes place.