This article titled “Huge increase in use of force at privately run young offender institution” was written by Alan Travis, home affairs editor, for The Guardian on Friday 17th February 2012 00.01 UTC

A huge increase in the use of force to restrain teenage boys at a privately run young offender institution has been sharply criticised by the chief inspector of prisons.

Nick Hardwick says the nine-fold rise in the use of force in the past year at the Serco-run Ashfield young offender institution from an average of 17 times a month to 150 times a month is “extremely high”.

The chief inspector has warned the private prison managers at Ashfield, near Bristol, that force must only be used as a last resort where there is an immediate risk to life or limb and not simply to obtain compliance with staff instructions.

But when the prison inspectors went into Ashfield last October they found that more than 40% of the teenage inmates had been restrained and the most frequent reason given in five out of the six preceding months was “failure to obey staff instructions”.

Penal reformers said the disclosure has “chilling echoes” of the death of 15-year-old Gareth Myatt, who died while being restrained at a Northamptonshire young offender institution in 2004.

The inspection report on Ashfield published on Friday also says there are serious problems with the late delivery of offenders from court despite a new private escort company, GeoAmey, with inmates delivered from court to Ashfield on one recent occasion between 11pm and 3am.

All new arrivals were also strip-searched even though few items of contraband were ever found. The inspectors say this practice should stop.

Ashfield opened in 1999 on the site of the former Pucklechurch remand centre as the first privately run young offender institution but was repeatedly hit by disturbances. In 2003, the director-general of the prison service described it as the worst prison in Britain and most of the teenagers were withdrawn.

Serco has been running the jail since 2005 and it received a glowing inspection report in 2010 but was only half-full at the time.

The prison inspectors say that Ashfield is now being run at or near its capacity of 380 teenage boys but the staff show a lack of confidence when it comes to dealing with poor behaviour.

The report says the sharp rise in the use of force partly reflected the 50% rise in the population and claims of better recording but most incidents happened when young people were moving to activities.

“In five out of the six preceding months, failure to obey staff instructions was frequently recorded as the issue leading to the use of force. Managers assured us that this analysis was not a true reflection of the main reason for the use of force and that in most instances it had actually been used to prevent escalations of altercations between young people.”

But the inspectors make clear that using force to restrain the inmates must never be done simply to ensure they obeyed staff instructions.

Hardwick said: “It is of some concern that some important recommendations in relation to safety have not been met and young people report feeling less safe and less well supported.

“Following the contraction in the number of establishments for children and young people under 18, it is likely that the current situation, operating at or near full capacity, will continue,” he said. “The need to ensure safeguarding and behaviour management procedures are operating well will be of greater importance than ever.”

Michael Spurr, chief executive officer of the National Offender Management Service, said he accepted that further work needed to be done to create a safer environment.

But Frances Crook of the Howard League for Penal Reform said it had “chilling echoes” of the death of Myatt: “Important safety issues have not been met and there were many incidents of strip-searching children unnecessarily. It was not so long ago that this prison was so unsafe that unprecedented emergency measures were implemented and prisoners were withdrawn as it was likely that the management would lose control of the prison,” she said.

“Only three years ago the institution recorded more than 600 attacks on inmates in one year – the highest number of every jail, including adults, in the country. This jail has a history of failing children and the public.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “Courts given green light to hire own interpreters as ALS struggles to cope” was written by Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent, for The Guardian on Thursday 16th February 2012 19.34 UTC

A £300m private contract providing interpreters to all courts across England and Wales has been partially abandoned two weeks after being launched.

The Ministry of Justice has circulated instructions to courts and tribunals allowing them to hire interpreters from other sources in “urgent” cases because hearings are being cancelled when Applied Language Solutions (ALS) translators fail to appear.

There had been widespread criticism of the deal with ALS, a firm acquired by the public services provider Capita Group last December. The company claims the contract, which formally started on 1 February, would save the government £60m over five years.

An internal MoJ email seen by the Guardian says: “We have decided that Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service [HMCTS] must take urgent action to mitigate the number of hearings that are failing as a result of the contractor’s difficulties with sourcing interpreters at short notice.

“With immediate effect HMCTS will revert to the previous arrangements for all bookings due within 24 hours at the magistrates’ courts … we will revert to previous arrangements for urgent bookings required for bail applications, deports and fast track applications in the first tier tribunal immigration and asylum and urgent bookings in the asylum support tribunal.”

It also admits: “We understand that some staff and judiciary have sympathy with existing interpreters. We must however do all we can to encourage sign-up to the new arrangements – the new contract has the potential to bring significant benefits to both interpreters and the justice system as a whole.”

ALS confirmed that some cases have been cancelled because the firm was unable to provide interpreters.

“Unfortunately that has been true in some cases which is something that we are working extremely hard to resolve,” an ALS spokesperson said.

The company explained that the original MoJ tender document had valued the five-year contract at £300m.

The shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, wrote to the justice minister, Kenneth Clarke, this week warning about concerns within the “interpreting community” over the decision to channel all interpreting contracts through one firm.

“Ensuring value for money in delivery of translation and interpretation services is clearly important,” he said, “but this must not be to the detriment of the quality of the service in such a critical area of justice.”

Labour’s justice spokesman Andy Slaughter said the contract had been awarded “in the face of clear warnings and opposition from the interpreter community” and that “hard-pressed taxpayers will have to foot the bill not only of delayed and abandoned court hearings, but of unnecessary remands into custody, appeals and judicial reviews”.

Slaughter added: “There is a genuine risk of miscarriages of justice because of inadequate or unsuitable interpreting and translating service, and breaches of the right to a fair hearing under the Human Rights Act.”

The Professional Interpreters’ Alliance (PIA), which represents public service interpreters, told the Law Gazette this week that 60% of the 2,300 interpreters on the national register have refused to work for ALS because of disputes over pay policy and the standard of qualifications required.

When it began, the MoJ praised the ALS deal and said it meant that “that interpreting assignments across several agencies … can be allocated to interpreters more effectively.

“A single interpreter can now complete consecutive assignments for different agencies in the same general location where previously two, or more, interpreters would have been booked.”

The MoJ acknowledged that there were problems: “The Ministry of Justice is working with Applied Language Solutions to closely monitor the operation of the new contract.

“The government is determined to ensure that taxpayers get value for money across the whole of the justice system. This new contract will save at least £18m a year on the cost of interpretation and translation, a reduction of almost a third, but will ensure that high quality interpreters and translators are still available to those in need.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “Secret court procedures could damage UK’s reputation, critics claim” was written by Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent, for The Guardian on Thursday 16th February 2012 17.32 UTC

The UK’s reputation as a “free and fair democracy” could be damaged by excessive use of secret court procedures that the government aims to introduce, Northamptonshire police has warned.

The advice is among nearly 70 responses to the controversial justice and security green paper posted online by the Cabinet Office this week. More than 20 further submissions, however, including those from several large police forces, so far remain confidential.

The government’s proposed expansion of “closed material procedures” (CMPs) into civil courts is an attempt to prevent sensitive claims for damages being aired in open hearings.

The move follows the embarrassing torrent of actions brought against the intelligence agencies by former terrorist suspects such as Binyam Mohamed, a British citizen held in Guantánamo Bay, who claimed he was tortured while detained in jails, including in US custody.

Under the proposals, not only would ministers be able to order a hearing to be conducted in secret, but the proceedings would also deny claimants access to government evidence or witnesses – leaving them effectively untested in court. In addition, the final judgment could be wholly or partially withheld.

The controversial reform is supported by senior figures in the security community, notably Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee.

In his published submission, he argues that co-operation with foreign intelligence agencies such as the CIA will be endangered if secrets are exposed in court.

“It is essential that our courts are able to handle intelligence material, and that that material is properly protected,” Rifkind states. “It is a fundamental principle of intelligence-sharing that such exchanges are kept confidential.

“Publication of other countries’ intelligence material, whether sensitive or otherwise, undermines the key principle of confidentiality on which relations with foreign intelligence services are based and has the potential to cause serious harm to future intelligence co-operation and thereby undermine the national security of the UK.”

Rifkind calls for additional protections, noting that “we do not consider that [secret courts] offer sufficient surety to our allies”, and suggests adopting a US-style “executive veto” on release of intelligence material – although he admits such powers might not be compatible with the European convention on human rights.

Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, also expresses support for CMPs, “where it is necessary for the fair and balanced disposal of the case including national security issues”.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) also backs the development but says they should only be used “in exceptional cases where a fair trial would be impossible if a party were unable to rely on the sensitive material to defend a claim against it”.

But a majority of the published responses are highly critical. Northamptonshire police’s submission states: “It is proposed that CMPs are available whenever the secretary of state makes the decision that the disclosure of sensitive material will be damaging to the public. This is very widely drafted and could result in its misuse. This could be used to encompass material concerning crime prevention tactics, police informants and intelligence led operations.

“The impact of the overuse of CMPs would be to damage the UK reputation of a free and fair democracy.”

The Northamptonshire force also questions whether they are consistent with article 6 of the European convention on human rights –the right to a fair trial. The force’s chief constable is spokesperson on ethics for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is damning in its rejection. “Closed material procedures are inherently unfair to the excluded party,” their response says. “The right to know the evidence given by the other side is such a fundamental principle of natural justice, it can never be fairer to adopt a closed material procedure in order to determine a claim, even if the alternative is that the claim will be struck out.”

John Hemmings, the Liberal Democrat MP who has challenged privacy hearings in parliament, observes: “There is very clear evidence that secret hearings are unreliable. This is obvious from the many false allegations of blackmail that have been made in recent privacy injunctions … When there is secrecy there is the potential for a disconnect between the judicial proceedings and reality.”

The Police Service of Northern Ireland expressed concern about the integrity of inquests in Northern Ireland, particularly in historical cases from the Troubles, where coroners currently dispenses justice based on a “full consideration of the facts, sensitive or otherwise”.

Among other organisations that have submitted critical responses are Amnesty International, the Committee on the Administration of Justice, Justice and the Guardian.

Acpo’s submission enters a final plea: “There may be potential for confusion regarding the use of abbreviation CMP for ‘closed material procedures’ with the long established use of that abbreviation in the covert world for ‘covert monitoring post/s’”. So that surveillance secret is now out.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “An open and shut case” was written by Jon Robins, for guardian.co.uk on Thursday 16th February 2012 12.29 UTC

Why should we expect a part of the criminal justice system to make money? That’s a question being asked in relation to the growing concerns over the arrangements – or the lack of them – for the closure of the Forensic Science Service, which is due to take place next month.

Just to recap, the FSS is the biggest provider of forensic science services to police forces in England and Wales. It handles more than 60% of the forensic work ordered by the police, working on more than 120,000 cases a year and employing some 1,300 scientists. But ministers claim (and this is disputed) that the service is losing £2m a month.

In yesterday’s Observer Sir Alec Jeffreys, the inventor of DNA profiling, attacked the axing of the FSS for its ‘unimaginative bean-counting mentality’, and the New Scientist last week reported a LinkedIn survey which found that more than 75% of the 365 forensic scientists who responded thought the closure would lead to more miscarriages of justice. The government’s reasons for shutting the service down are set out in this October 2011 report.

Since the early 1990s, the FSS has made a difficult transition from executive agency of the Home Office to commercial entity. The FSS was reborn as a ‘GovCo’ (government-owned, contractor-operated body) in 2005 in a move towards becoming a public private partnership, and in 2008 it was backed by a £50m government loan as part of its transformation.

Alastair Logan OBE, the lawyer who represented defendants in the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven cases, has written about his fears for the survival of the FSS archive, which contains case files and retained material from some 1.5m cases. “The government declines to say what will happen to it as they are seeking a financial solution that does not require government funding – they call it ‘examining the business case’,” he argues.

The preservation of the archive in its current form is apparently another luxury that we can’t afford. “The alternative is either destruction or the return of the material to the forces that provided it most of whom have no facilities for long term protection and preservation (even if they could afford it),” he argues. “The chances of the many cold cases that remain being resolved would be negligible and a large and irreplaceable collection of evidence will be lost.”

The Criminal Cases Review Commission, the independent organisation set up to investigate alleged miscarriages of justice, has argued that closure would “undoubtedly lead to miscarriages of justice not being corrected” and “the consequent loss of confidence in the criminal justice system”. The CCRC has sweeping powers (under the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, section 17) to obtain material held by public bodies – that includes materials and samples held by the FSS. The section 17 powers don’t extend to private bodies. In evidence prepared for the Commons science and technology committee, the CCRC reported that since 2005 it has requested that the FSS preserve or make available material on at least 150 occasions.

In the last few weeks, the CCRC has agreed for a clause to be included in the framework agreement governing the contracts for the provision of private forensic services which approximates the section 17 powers. “Obviously a contractual right is second best to a statutory power,” notes case review manager group leader Matt Humphrey.

The science and technology committee’s report was blistering in both its response to the arrangements for the wind up of the FSS, and the manner in which the decision to axe such an important service was made. The MPs reported a near complete failure to consult the views of anyone worth consulting (save for the Association of Chief Police Officers).

The attorney general was only consulted in the final ‘clearance processes’, the DPP wasn’t and the CCRC did ‘not appear to be involved at all’. Neither the views of the government’s chief scientist, Sir John Beddington, and the Home Office chief scientist, Bernard Silverman, were taken into account. “This is unsatisfactory and unjustifiable given the impact the closure of the FSS could have on the work of the criminal justice system,” said the MPs.

They were in no doubt as to the reasons for shutting down the FSS labs. “The impacts on research and development, on the capacity of private providers to absorb the FSS’s market share, on the future of the archives and on the wider impacts to the criminal justice system appear to have been hastily overlooked in favour of the financial bottom line.” Nor were they impressed by the claim that the FSS was losing £2m a month “…. not the full story,” the MPs said, explaining that the figure did not take into account expected savings from the transformation, nor potential further declines in business and, while some monthly losses may have been £2m, the average monthly loss over the past year was lower.

The fear is that the ongoing marketisation of forensics will inevitably lead to loss of quality. Alastair Logan predicts a proliferation of what he calls ‘toy labs’ where work done quickly, cheaply and without quality checks (such as ISO 17025) as police respond to their own pressures to cut costs. “One has only to recall the handling of exhibits in the Stephen Lawrence case to know how poor training and understanding affect the detection of crime,” Logan reflects.

Nigel Hodge is a forensic scientist and former reporting officer at the FSS’s Chepstow lab. He believes that scrapping the FSS will undermine the development of a sector previously bolstered by the public service ethos of the FSS. “While individual forensic scientists may be primarily concerned with issues relating to justice, the companies that employ them are driven by commercial motives: maximisation of profit, increasing market share, brand identity etc,” he reckons.

Then there is what Hodges calls “the whole business of trade secrets” where a forensic services provider develops a new technology this puts him at a competitive advantage. “There is a danger of a ‘black box’ situation developing where information is put into a system by forensic scientists, and ‘evidence’ pops out of the other end but where no one really knows what goes on in between.” Forensic science shouldn’t be like “a secret recipe for fried chicken”, he adds. Quite.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

If you look for statistics on how many CCTV cameras there are in the UK you will find varying answers, all of which say it is a substantial number but the fact is no one really knows just how many there are. You’ll see phrases like “The UK has 1% of the world’s population but 20% of the world’s surveillance cameras” while other figures estimate there to be some 1.85 million cameras – roughly 1 for every 32 people. The London Underground Network sports 11,000 cameras alone, or at least it did in 2009, there may be more now.

These are there allegedly for the detection and prevention of crime, and sometimes when used properly and responsibly they can yield useful evidence which is often used as a strong argument against any protests regarding things like invasion of privacy. The problem is, the evidence shows they are very often not used properly and responsibly but rather prejudicially and unfairly.

We don’t need to look far for evidence which demonstrates that point. If you consider Danny Major’s case, a serving police officer at the time of the alleged offence, was convicted of assaulting a detained person. Short clips of CCTV footage from within the station were used prejudicially against Danny at trial, which in fact were of no real consequence to anything, while at the same time he and his defence were told that no other relevant footage existed. There was in reality 13 hours of relevant footage which shows officers colluding and conspiring against him, one of which had at the time a history of violence and has continued with violent conduct since. It was later discovered that this officer had the victim’s blood on his uniform, another claim which was denied at the time of Danny’s trial. You would think his conviction would have been quashed by now, every plank of the case against him can now be discredited with evidence which had been withheld from him at the time of his conviction, including CCTV footage. Yet the Major family must continue their fight for justice because those who exist purportedly as a safeguard against miscarriages of justice, including the CCRC, have effectively rewritten the prosecution’s case in order to accommodate the evidence which wasn’t before the Jury.

Nick Rose was convicted of murdering Charlotte Pinkney, yet there were in the teens of witnesses who reported having seen her alive after the last possible time he could have done so. At least one of the areas she was said to have been seen was covered by CCTV, there may be more. Every witness, no matter how credible, no matter what their reason for being sure of the time and date they saw Charlotte are said to have been ‘mistaken’. It had been claimed that there was no CCTV footage with Charlotte on it after they allege Nick killed her, yet there should have been CCTV footage which could confirm or deny the time and date of at least one sighting. So where is that footage now? As you would expect in a case where someone has always, and continues to, protest his innocence, when it was asked for it had been erased.

In 2008, Lee Mockble along with 2 passengers was driving through Birmingham on the day of a football derby. As he did, his car was attacked by known football hooligans. One of his passengers was injured by glass from the car window which had broken in the incident as evidenced by a trail of his blood left on the street and pavement as he later fled being chased by members of the same group. The person who threw the projectile causing the injury had been seen doing it by a police officer who knew him by name and arrested him but not the others who were with him. Realising his passenger was bleeding heavily, Lee turned his car in an attempt to find paramedics but as he did his car came under attack by the other members of the group who came out into the road throwing bricks and waving sticks. He swerved to avoid the group on his side of the road but as he rounded the corner on the opposite side of the road he ran over another member of the same group who had fallen into his path and later died from his injuries. That is the account he provided that day, and it has not changed since. Action 77 in the police log states that there was no CCTV cameras which is marked not to be disclosed, yet the crime scene photos clearly show the signs which state the area is indeed covered, “keeping Birmingham safe”. At trial the earlier incident was described as a silly isolated ‘moment of madness’ despite other items in the police logs marked not to be disclosed demonstrating that the group were very well known as being hooligans. It was claimed there was no later attack on Lee’s car, no reason to swerve, no bricks being thrown yet there is damage to the car which could not have been caused either by the earlier incident or as a result of running over Mr Priest who had stumbled and fallen before the car went over him. There were 3 if not 4 cameras covering the scene, you would expect the CCTV footage to confirm or deny either account, yet there it is in the log, no cameras in the area and later accounts say instead that any cameras covering the relevant area were faulty. It must be one or the other, it can’t be both, a camera that doesn’t exist (even ignoring the signs which say the opposite) cannot be faulty. Strangely, as in Danny Major’s case, there is nothing wrong with any camera or lack of availability of any footage which covers areas of no consequence to the prosecution’s case and are not disputed.

On the 13^th of January, the Huffington Post reported on the case of Alex Bryce, a Labour Researcher, who had been charged with assaulting and obstructing a police officer. The CCTV footage shown on their website shows something entirely different, yet despite requests from Mr Bryce’s defence team the CPS refused to disclose it, the footage only being seen when the case called at court at which point the case was thrown out. According to the article, no CCTV footage is available of an earlier incident which the officers concerned claimed justified what appears to be their assault on Mr Bryce and his partner despite that incident allegedly happening at the gates of Parliament itself.

In August 2008, Sean Riggs became disturbed after suffering a breakdown, hostel staff made six 999 calls asking for him to be taken to a place of safety but the police refused to attend. He left the hostel and was later arrested and restrained. He died later the same day but his family were told there was no CCTV in the van which transported him, and that CCTV covering the police station yard is missing. However existence of CCTV cameras in the station yard appears only to have been acknowledged after Mr Riggs’s family insisted on being shown around the station whereby they observed the camera for themselves. They were later told that the camera had been faulty since May of that year. More than 3 years later, Mr Riggs’s family still haven’t had an answer as to why he is no longer with them.

There are of course many, many other cases similar to one or more of those I’ve mentioned. These instances relating to CCTV are by no means rare as any cursory search on the internet will show anyone interested enough to look for it. CCTV may be a valuable tool in the detection and prevention of crime, but what can be done to prevent its prejudicial use? Is it really the case that a country so extensively covered by CCTV cameras has such an appalling record not only of maintaining the equipment but preserving pertinent evidence obtained from it? Or is it like the diaries in Eddie Gilfoyle’s case or the “missing” documents which caused the collapse of the trial against officers for alleged police corruption – faulty, missing, destroyed but actually available in reality? If it is the latter, then the often claimed non-existence of CCTV evidence which is supposed to be there to protect us all, is in fact evidence of widespread national corruption at all levels of a justice system proclaimed to be the best in the world. CCTV evidence has become more of a threat to the civil liberties of the innocent at risk of wrongful conviction than it ever could be for the genuinely guilty.

This article titled “Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s acquittal challenged by prosecutors” was written by Tom Kington in Rome, for The Guardian on Tuesday 14th February 2012 16.30 UTC

Italian prosecutors have filed an appeal against the acquittal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito for the murder of the British student Meredith Kercher in Perugia.

Knox and Sollecito were initially handed 26- and 25-year sentences for the fatal stabbing of Kercher, who was found partially clothed with her neck slashed in her apartment in November 2007.

The pair were acquitted on appeal last October after a court ruled that Knox had been pressured to make compromising statements during interrogation and that key DNA evidence was poorly handled.

Under Italian law, both prosecutors and the accused have the right to take cases to a second appeal at Italy’s supreme court, and the filing on Tuesday was expected. Depositing the 111-page appeal, the prosecutor Giancarlo Costagliola said: “I immediately had the feeling that the appeal decision was profoundly unjust and now I am convinced that it should be annulled.”

A local drifter, Rudy Guede, was given a definitive conviction in a separate trial for his role in the murder.

Reacting to news of the appeal, Sollecito said: “This is a story that never ends. For me it’s a real torment which has lasted for four years.”

The supreme court will not reconsider evidence and cannot convict but will examine whether correct legal procedures were followed. Should it decide procedures were violated, it will order a retrial.

Prosecutors have previously questioned whether the appeal court was within its rights to order the review of DNA evidence that proved crucial to the acquittal.

Carlo dalla Vedova, a lawyer representing Knox, said: “Hypothetically speaking, should there be a new hearing, it would be held in Florence. But I doubt the supreme court will rule before the end of 2012. Then you would need months to fix a new hearing and neither the supreme court nor the court in Florence could order the defendants to be taken into custody before a final verdict, which would be three to four years from now.”

Knox moved back to her home town in Seattle after serving four years in jail in Perugia. Asked whether she could be extradited from the US should a new trial find her guilty, Dalla Vedova said: “There is an extradition treaty between Italy and the US which is automatic for Italian citizens, but in the case of US citizens you would need approval from the US government.”

Knox has launched an appeal of her own against the three-year sentence she received for initially claiming that a local barman, Patrick Lumumba, was in the house the night Kercher was killed. Lumumba was arrested and then released when his alibi stood up. Knox’s sentence was upheld on appeal although she was freed having already served the time.

Knox is still on trial in Italy charged with falsely claiming that Italian police hit her during her interrogation.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “Youth custody is failing young people who want to change their ways” was written by Mark Johnson, for The Guardian on Tuesday 14th February 2012 13.30 UTC

Two boys died in youth custody last month. It’s a reminder that we reserve our most dangerous and violent jails for children.

The kids’ secure estate is dominated by young offender institutions and secure training centres. Last year, of the quarter of a million children arrested, only 4,000 were given custodial sentences. It is incredible, then, that they managed 1,500 incidents of self-harming and a further 3,500 incidents of violence.

The public mistakenly believes that once kids get into the secure estate they are rescued. Yet the interventions designed to help them are frequently unscientific and rarely successful. The children themselves confirm this.

Work carried out by my charity User Voice has shown that young people who had hoped to gain an education inside rarely did so. In a disorganised system, they would be sent on the same course again and again, or the course they wanted would be unavailable. Those who felt ready for GCSEs found the education provided was too often primary school level. They wanted qualifications, they said, because these might lead them to jobs (despite their criminal record) and jobs were important. More than half of the young offenders we spoke to were clear about what they wanted in the long term: the same as everyone else – a job, a family, a home.

But if violence and self-harm statistics and the statements of the children themselves is not enough to prove how ineffective our incarceration system is, there is no better testament to its failure than the dismal reoffending rates. Between 69% and 79% of the children we incarcerate reoffend within a year. The psychologists who assess the children for recognised risk factors have easily discerned that the more risk factors, the higher the chance of reoffending.

The same psychologists reveal that a quarter of the children in the youth justice system have been abused, a third have experienced significant bereavement, a quarter have been involved with mental health services. I wish they spent less time assessing the kids and predicting their descent and a bit more time treating them.

If a child from a wealthy, educated family had drug or alcohol problems after experiencing abuse, bereavement or mental health difficulties, his family would try to intercept his fall. There would be shrinks and rehab centres lined up to save him, and the family would devote resources to this. Children from the “underclass” don’t have those options.

The youth justice system is the last net, and could stop them from crashing to the ground. Instead, they are denied the proper support and rehabilitation they need. And their criminal records then exclude them from the jobs and income they aspire to.

There is one other face of children’s incarceration. Secure children’s homes, local authority-run and divided into small units with a high ratio of staff to children, aim to meet children’s educational and therapeutic needs. They mimic as closely as possible what most kids in trouble lack: a caring, guiding family home.

Guess what? The long-term economics of giving these children such support conflicts with the short-term political imperative to save money. Most are closing. Only 183 children of the 2,000 incarcerated at any one time have a place in secure homes, and more cuts are planned. The rest are abandoned to a system that costs the government less today, but all of us – including the children – far more tomorrow.

• Mark Johnson, a rehabilitated offender and former drug user, is an author and the founder of the charity User Voice

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric cleared of tax evasion” was written by Sam Jones and David Conn, for The Guardian on Wednesday 8th February 2012 11.45 UTC

The Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric, the owner of Sheffield Wednesday, have been cleared of evading tax on payments totalling £189,000 that were made by Mandaric into Redknapp’s offshore bank account while the two men were at Portsmouth football club.

Redknapp told reporters outside court he had been through a five-year-long “nightmare”, adding that the case “should never have come to court”.

Both Redknapp, who served as manager of Portsmouth, and Mandaric, the club’s former owner, had denied the charges during the three-week trial at Southwark crown court, arguing that the money was given as a gesture of friendship and had nothing to do with Redknapp’s job.

Mandaric and Redknapp embraced in the dock as the verdicts were read out after five hours of deliberations.

Redknapp immediately left the court, while Mandaric walked up to Detective Inspector Dave Manley to shake his hand and say: “Thank you.”

Outside, Redknapp, still emotional, said: “I must thanks the fans at Tottenham, especially the other night.

“The Wigan game was the most moving I’ve ever felt, to have the fans singing my name throughout the game while all this was going on. That will always be special to me and I will never forget that. Most importantly, [thanks] to my family, who have really pulled through it these last five years that this has been hanging over us. I’m really just looking forward to getting home … It really has been a nightmare, I’ve got to be honest. And this is a case that should never have come to court. It’s unbelievable, really.”

He said waiting for the verdict had been “horrendous … But it was a unanimous decision, absolutely unanimous – there was no case to answer.”

A Tottenham Hotspur spokesman said: “Everyone at the club is delighted for Harry and his family. This has been hanging over him for over four years and the last two weeks have been particularly difficult. We are pleased to see this resolved and we all look forward to the rest of the season.”

Speaking outside court, Mandaric said: “I would rather not talk much now, and I’m quite sure you understand that.

“I’ve got to go somewhere to try to pinch myself and wake me up from that horrible dream that I had in the past.

“As we said in the statements, I always believed in the truth, and always believed in the British justice system.”

Redknapp’s son Jamie greeted his father with a hug outside court.

Manley – who was shouted at by Redknapp during proceedings – made no comment other than saying: “I accept the court’s decision.”

Chris Martin, of HM Revenue and Customs, said in a statement: “We have no regrets about pursuing this case because it was vitally important that the facts were put before a jury for their consideration.

“We accept the verdict of the jury but I would like to remind those who are evading tax by using offshore tax havens that it always makes sense to come forward and talk to us before we come to talk to you.”

The first charge of cheating the public revenue alleged that between 1 April 2002 and 28 November 2007 Mandaric paid $145,000 (£93,100) into the account.

The second charge for the same offence related to a sum of $150,000 (£96,300) allegedly paid between 1 May 2004 and 28 November 2007.

The prosecution had claimed that the two sums represented bonuses for Redknapp and were therefore eligible to have tax paid on them. Redknapp received the first payment from Mandaric, it was said, to make up for money he lost on the profitable sale of Peter Crouch to Aston Villa in 2002.

After Crouch was sold, Portsmouth paid Redknapp a bonus of £115,473, representing 5% of the net profit, with PAYE tax and national insurance deducted. Mandaric acknowledged that Redknapp was unhappy with that figure as he felt he was due 10% of the profits because he had had to work hard to convince his boss to sign Crouch in the first place.

Four days after he received the £115,473 from Portsmouth, Redknapp went to Monaco on Mandaric’s suggestion and personal recommendation to open the bank account.

Redknapp told the court that when asked to chose a password for the account, he had opted for Rosie47, in honour of his pet bulldog and the year of his birth. A month later, Mandaric paid the $145,000 into the Monaco account.

Mandaric described the first payment as “seed money”, given to “do something special for Harry” and intended to help his friend grow profitable investments. He also denied the second payment of $150,000 was in any way connected to Redknapp’s job, saying it was merely paid into the account because the investments had lost their value and he felt “embarrassed” by the losses, as he had a reputation as shrewd investor.

Redknapp had repeatedly denied being “silly” enough to entertain the notion of avoiding tax, saying he had paid £1m in tax in 2008 and was not “any kind of tax fiddler”. He was, he added, “the most ungreedy person you have ever met in your whole life, ever”.

However, he admitted under cross-examination that he had lied to a News of the World reporter who had challenged him in 2009 about where the money came from by telling him that the first payment was a bonus to make up for the money he had lost on the Crouch sale.

Redknapp, 64, said he had told Rob Beasley that the money was a bonus – thus contradicting Mandaric’s claim that it was an unrelated investment account – to get rid of the reporter.

“I don’t have to tell Mr Beasley the truth,” Redknapp said. “I have to tell the police the truth, but not Mr Beasley. He’s a News of the World reporter.” He said he had decided to lie because he did not want to read a story in the paper on the day Spurs were due to take on Manchester United in the 2009 League Cup final.

Mandaric, 73, was also adamant that he had never sought to evade tax.

He told the court: “I did not know what the word [evade] means,” adding that over six years his companies paid a total of £55m in taxes.

Redknapp, who underwent minor heart surgery last year to unblock his arteries, is the most successful English manager in the Premier League era, having led Portsmouth to FA Cup success and Spurs to last season’s Uefa Champions League quarter-finals.

Mandaric bought Sheffield Wednesday in 2010, having previously owned Leicester City.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “After Dobson and Norris, what other unsolved murders could be closed?” was written by Duncan Campbell and Eric Allison, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 6th January 2012 18.01 UTC

The breakthrough in DNA analysis that led to the conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence this week raises the question of how many other unsolved murders could be solved by similar means and, more controversially, how many miscarriages of justice cases could be cleared up.

The detailed scientific review that painstakingly went through all the exhibits in the Lawrence case reportedly cost £3.4 million. The Met’s homicide and serious crime command alone are currently re-examining between 15 and 20 cold case murders, all of which take time and money. Clearly there would be reluctance to dedicate those sort of resources to investigating alleged miscarriage of justice cases which have slipped from public view but many campaigners believe that, if the money was allocated to such intricate analyses, some cases could finally be resolved.

It is nearly three years now since Sean Hodgson walked out of the court of appeal as a free man after spending almost three decades in prison for crimes he did not commit. His 1982 conviction for rape and murder of Teresa de Simone three years earlier was quashed as a result of a DNA analysis that could have established his innocence a decade before.

Hampshire police had reopened the murder inquiry after new analysis of DNA evidence from the scene did not match a sample from Hodgson. Such tests were not available at the time of his trial. In the wake of the appeal, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) asked the Crown Prosecution Service to review all similar murder cases where DNA evidence was available and the defendants still alive.

“We decided to look again at every application received by the commission in relation to a conviction for rape or murder arising before 1990,” said a CCRC spokesperson.

“We did so with an open mind, but we did not anticipate that there would be a great many cases because the commission is an organisation created after the use of DNA evidence became established in this country, and DNA has therefore always been a routine consideration in reviews.”

A total of 240 cases were re-examined. The number does not include a further 38 cases which met the criteria but which had already been referred by the commission and the conviction quashed. In 80 of the cases, it was established that admitted facts about the case meant that DNA could not be at issue, such as rape cases where intercourse was admitted and the issue was one of consent, and murder cases where applicants admitted causing the fatality but claimed provocation or self-defence. In the majority of remaining cases, the commission decided to take no further action after re-examination of the facts of the case. There is one case outstanding.

Such DNA testing, of course, may not always bring about the result sought by campaigners in miscarriages of justice cases. James Hanratty was hanged in 1962 for the murder of Michael Gregsten and became the subject of a series of campaigns to have his name cleared. In 2002, DNA evidence from the murder scene was deemed to link him to the murder, establishing his guilt “beyond doubt”, in the words of the then lord chief justice, Lord Woolf. His supporters have argued that this showed only that the evidence must have been contaminated.

One case in particular would merit more detailed analysis: in 1993, Susan May was convicted of murdering her 89 year old aunt, Hilda Marchbank. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and ordered to serve a minimum of 12 years. In 2005, she became the first convicted murderer to be released “on tariff”, despite continuing to protest her innocence. Marchbank was found dead in her home in Royton, Lancashire. She had been beaten and the house ransacked. Police initially believed her to be a victim of a robbery gone wrong, but suspicion was cast on May, who was her aunt’s carer.

The main plank of the prosecution’s case were marks found on the wall of the deceased’s home. These marks were said to contain human blood, suggested to be that of the victim. May’s fingerprint was said to be within one of the marks. May has repeatedly requested the samples containing the marks be re-tested using proper analytical techniques. Her requests have been denied. Her case has twice been rejected by the court of appeal; simple, affordable, tests could send her back to that court.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

This article titled “MPs call for new law to make stalking a criminal offence” was written by Mark Townsend, home affairs editor, for The Observer on Sunday 5th February 2012 00.06 UTC

Victims of stalkers could win new protection following completion of a major inquiry, which will this week recommend that a specific offence of stalking be created to combat the problem.

An all-party parliamentary group is to publish a report into its six-month investigation, arguing for a change in legislation that will see perpetrators given substantial prison sentences for any abuse, whether emotional or physical, that has been endured by their victims. The findings pre-empt a separate Home Office inquiry, which completes its consultation on how to protect stalking victims today.

Support for a new law in England and Wales is growing. David Cameron has already conceded that there is a gap in the current protection for stalking victims, while Home Office ministers Theresa May and Lynne Featherstone are understood to be sympathetic to demands for new legislation.

Elfyn Llwyd MP, chairman of the parliamentary group – which heard evidence from lawyers, psychologists, academics and the parents of murdered stalking victims – said: “We are very firmly of the view that there needs to be a change in the law. We’ve looked at other countries, such as the way Scotland has done it, and they have a law which resulted in several hundred successful prosecutions in the first year.”

Llwyd, a former barrister, said it was critical that any changes to legislation be accompanied by an awareness campaign to ensure that crown prosecutors, police and the probation service begin to take the issue seriously. Of the estimated 120,000 cases of stalking each year, 53,000 are recorded as crimes by police and only one in 50 of these leads to an offender being jailed. High-profile cases include that of Clare Bernal, shot dead by her stalker in 2005 as she worked at the Harvey Nichols department store. Her murderer had been due in court the following week for harassing her.

“We need a commitment from government that the police are aware of the insidious and dangerous thing that stalking is,” said Llwyd. Researchers recently found that two-thirds of victims said the police and prosecutors did not take their complaints sufficiently seriously.

One of the organisations driving the campaign for a new stalking law has been the probation union Napo, whose research indicates that thousands of perpetrators, mainly men, are not being dealt with seriously enough by the criminal justice system.

Harry Fletcher, the union’s assistant general secretary, said: “The courts are not dealing with stalkers properly. Very few receive custodial sentences and those that do are not in prison long enough to receive treatment or rehabilitation.” The union is concerned that prison sentences handed down to stalkers are so short that rehabilitation and treatment is impossible. Just 20 stalkers a year are jailed for longer than 12 months for putting a victim in fear of violence, Napo said.

Laura Richards, of the charity Protection Against Stalking, said: “We know first hand that, for too long, victims have suffered in silence or at the hands of the criminal justice system. The inquiry has now given them a voice.”

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, another ardent supporter of the need to create a specific offence of stalking in England and Wales, said it was vital that any change in the law was not delayed. She warned that it could take two years for a new law to be introduced and urged peers to back an amendment tabled tomorrow that could lead to a quicker change being implemented. Cooper said: “Nearly one in five women over 16 have been a victim of stalking. The persistent and terrifying intimidation, threats and abuse can destroy people’s lives and escalate into serious violence. Although progress has been made, the criminal justice system still isn’t sensitive enough to the problem and too many victims still aren’t getting the protection they need. That’s why a change in the law is needed.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.