UK COMMENT
The criminal justice system: Chaos
meets order — the result is tragedy
There is order in the court. There is chaos on the
streets. And they meet in the main hall of Thames magistrates court in
the East End of London. It is busting with people — this guy made of
muscle yelling at his tiny female lawyer: “This is MY case, this is MY
life”; the elegant Somali man with the beautiful black suit cruising
quite lost through the crowd, without a word of English to find his way;
the young Bengali lad who just blew a spliff in the toilets; the
prosecutor reading God Knows by Joseph Heller; the little knot of
regular defence lawyers, Charlie and Teresa and Denis and Keith,
swapping the gossip and wondering how long it will be before somebody
tells them the new security code for the door to their room so they can
finally start work for the day.
The courtrooms open. Here come the overnights — the
people who have been arrested by Hackney police and held in the cells
for this morning's hearing.
Case one: male, white, 26, charged with theft of eight
packets of bacon from Londis supermarket — tested positive for heroin
and cocaine. Case two: male, Bengali, 19, charged with theft of £59.63
of food from Tesco — tested positive for heroin and cocaine. Case three:
male, white, 32, charged with harassing his mother and stepfather by
kicking down their door, breaking their window, threatening them in
persistent search for money — tested positive for heroin and cocaine.
The cases blur. Almost all male, almost all young,
almost all of them trailing a string of other cases that have just been
dealt with or are about to be dealt with, almost all of them already
serving one or more community punishments, many of them with unpaid
fines. And over and over again, the magistrates' mantra, “tested
positive for heroin and cocaine”. (Finally, an overnight defendant
appeared who had not tested positive for drugs. He was an alcoholic.)
Most of them plead guilty and are adjourned for reports.
This is the story of a week in court — the story of
what happens when the criminal justice system finally deals with the
mere 3% of offences which it manages to capture. The courtroom is the
crossroads for all the players in the system. Here is where the police
send those they have arrested. Here are the prosecutors with the
evidence they have collected. Here are the probation officers and the
prison escort officers waiting to dispose of the guilty. Here are the
offenders “brought to justice”. And here is the question: what does it
achieve?
It is a question of acute importance in a system which
more than ever relies on court-sanctioned punishment as its mechanism
for controlling crime. As this series has already described, the Home
Office has quietly compromised its innovative crime reduction programme,
including its support for problem-solving policing; and the National
Treatment Agency has taken the promising initiative to give treatment to
drug users and smothered it in misconception and mismanagement.
In the background, the probation service, which was
once the world leader in tackling the causes of crime, has been sliding
into a state of demoralised chaos — restructured, mismanaged, starved of
funds, overburdened and now on the verge of being restructured yet
again. With its best efforts at rehabilitation struggling, this
government now presides over a system which is overwhelmingly devoted to
punishment, handing out more jail sentences and more community
punishments than ever before in the history of this country. What does
it achieve?
Look at this man here, standing in the dock, fiddling
with his fingers. There is something Victorian about him. It might be
the respectable best suit he is wearing — white shirt, black tie and a
black jacket that's so big he must have borrowed it. It might be his
supplicant posture, his hands neatly folded in front of him, his head
hung down on his chest. It might just be his sheer frailty. He is as
thin as a whippet, his face is as pale as paper, and he is quivering
slightly as the district judge and the clerk of the court assemble the
facts about him.
At first, the case of Matthew King sounds simple
enough. On January 17 last year, in this same court, he admitted driving
while disqualified and trying to syphon petrol out of somebody else's
car. He tested positive for heroin and cocaine. He was given a 12-month
community rehabilitation order which meant he had to keep regular
appointments with a probation officer, but in September, he failed to
turn up twice, and now he is charged with breaching the order. He admits
it, and the judge adjourns the case for three weeks so that probation
can prepare a pre-sentence report on him.
Matthew King turns and slips quickly out of the court
and, just as the door swings shut behind him, there is a fleeting
glimpse of his life — a small woman with long blonde hair and a face
like a snapshot from another world. It is slightly frightening and
immediately haunting and somehow familiar, the way her skin is stretched
so tight across her cheeks that it has made her eyes grow large: this
woman has the face of a starving child. Again, there is something
Victorian here. And she is pulling at Matthew's jacket sleeve — no time
to lose. Why the urgency? Where are they going with their pale, skinny
bodies? What goes on in the private world of Matthew King?
Tracing him was easy enough: he had given his address
at the start of the hearing. It turned out to be a tower block in the
backwash of a motorway in the heart of what was once the teeming bustle
of the London docks. The lift was busted. The stone stairs smelled of
piss and garbage. On the fifth floor, just outside his flat, somebody
had smeared something brown and nasty on the wall. And when the door
finally cracked open on the security chain, there was Matthew and his
world, shaped by chaos. He was just back from Bethnal Green Road. He had
gone there with the woman with the hungry face, who turned out to be his
girlfriend, Lisa, and with John, who turned out to be the father of
Lisa's two oldest children. The three of them live here together and
every day they go to Bethnal Green Road to buy their gear. Everybody
does. But today it went wrong. John gave £70 to this black lad on a
bike. The black lad's mate kept Matthew and Lisa talking round the
corner. The black lad rode off and just didn't come back, but Matthew
knows him from a year ago and he's got a mate of his coming round — he's
well over 6ft and built out of bricks — and they're going back down
there to sort him out. But just now they've got no gear.
Lisa sweeps the carpet. She is 29, although she looks
nearly twice that. John fiddles with his fingers, which are mangled and
maimed by bad injections. Matthew says he's had a letter from probation
about preparing his pre-sentence report, and John gets it for him and —
just look at this — it says: “Please come and see me at this office. See
address below.” But there is no address below! And no phone number. So
Matthew's going to miss another appointment. At least this letter
reached him. The last lot got sent to his mum's house, and he can't go
round there because he doesn't get on with his stepdad. He's had all
this with probation before. The last time he went, he said: “What time
have I got to be here?” and they're: “You haven't got to be here.” Then
he tells the story of how he missed the appointments in September.
It's all about him and Lisa and the terrible business
with the baby. But then again, it's not — it's all about their whole
life. Matthew is 29, the elder of two brothers, born around the corner
in Mile End. His father was a drunk, used to smash the house up, and,
when Matthew was five, he left. His mum gave him a chance to come back,
but he just turned up and stole the stereo. Soon afterwards, his dad's
mate came out of prison and came round to see him and found he wasn't
there, so he moved in with Matthew's mum, and he's still there. His dad
is still in the East End somewhere, still drinking. As far as Matthew is
concerned, that man doesn't exist.
He went to Hackney Downs school and he was no good at
it, he still can't read or write except for his name, and the teachers
picked on him, so he swore at them, and they sent him home, so he
carried on swearing and didn't do no more school. The first time he was
nicked was for breaking into a car when he was 13; he got a caution. He
is good at breaking into cars. His crime was just silly stuff, though,
until he started using gear when he was about 18. Then he got into
nicking cars — he's sold a lot of taxis that way — and he was doing
burglaries too (shops, not houses).
Foster homes
Lisa and John both came up the same broken ladder. Lisa's dad left, and
she doesn't get on with her stepdad. John's dad died of cancer when he
was young and then he got teased for wearing crap clothes because they
were poor. Both of them were no good at school. John beat up a teacher
and left early. Lisa ran away from home and by the time she was 12, she
was selling herself down Aldgate to businessmen on their way home from
the City, then she ended up in foster homes and secure units.
She was 15 when she met John and got pregnant with
their first child, a boy. The social workers didn't like the look of
them, but John thought it would be OK: he was 20 then, working as a site
supervisor down at Canary Wharf, and they had a room at a bed and
breakfast on the Romford Road. But the social workers took the baby
away, so that same day Lisa went and found her mate Nicola (she's dead
now) and she smoked £50 of heroin in one afternoon. She'd never done it
before. She's been doing it ever since. John was soon at it too — he
wanted to know where all his money was going.
Matthew met them five years later. Lisa and John had
just had a second son. Lisa was still selling herself, and John was on
three kinds of medication for a paranoid obsessive disorder. He was
committing crimes every day of the week to fund their heroin habit, so
the social workers took this little boy away as well, although in the
end Lisa's mum went to court and got custody of both Lisa's kids. Lisa
and John sort of drifted apart. Matthew was arguing with his stepdad and
so he moved out to live with Lisa, and John stayed around.
Now, the three of them spend their days ducking and
diving and trying to find gear. Most days, they'll spend £100 down on
Bethnal Green Road for the three of them. They can get some of that in
benefits, but most of it, they have to hustle, so they have to break the
law. Most of the time, nobody knows about it. Then, once in a while,
they get caught.
Matthew has only been done half a dozen times. The
worst one was when he and a mate broke into a car in the West End
without noticing there was a police car parked right there in the road,
so the cops chased them, and Matthew started driving like a maniac,
going through red lights, heading the wrong way up a one-way street
until finally the police cornered him on the Embankment. He got 30 days
in Wandsworth for that and a driving ban, so he lost his job driving for
a haulage firm (Mind you, he never had a real licence in the first
place.)
Lisa and John also get away with most of what they do,
although Lisa's criminal record fills six pages. She's had fines,
community orders, five or six jail sentences. John's been done for
theft, burglary, fraud, bits of violence including battering a cop,
driving while disqualified. He's done 19 prison sentences. Nothing
changes.
It might have been different if there was real
treatment around, if they could get a decent prescription for methadone
or diamorphine, instead of the rations they get from NHS clinics. Most
of the time, no court tried to help them. So, they still need £100 a day
— and, by the time you allow for the prices the fences will pay, that
means laying their hands on more like £500 of property. John says it's
simple: going without gear is not an option; you do what you have to do;
the law doesn't come into it.
It all bent out of shape last summer. Lisa was
pregnant. She and Matthew really wanted the baby, but they were afraid
the social workers would move in again, so they kept it a bit quiet.
Then one day in June, Lisa fainted in the street — she can't afford
money for food so she'll often go two or three days at a time without
eating — and the hospital told the midwife, and the midwife told the
social workers, and so Lisa and Matthew cut a deal with them: they would
give up gear, they would sign on at the local NHS drugs clinic for some
methadone, and so the social workers would let them keep the baby. They
had to wait two weeks to get the methadone. When they got it, they were
only allowed 40mls a day, which wasn't enough. And they were refused
injectable methadone, which was bad for Lisa, who is a fixer. But they
stuck to the deal more or less. For the sake of their baby. Because they
already loved the baby.
He was born in August. They named him after Matthew.
They were proud and happy, and the baby was healthy — he wasn't addicted
to anything — and they spent just about all day every day in the
hospital, like real parents. And after two weeks, the social workers
took the baby away from them. It did their heads in. Lisa says it really
did Matthew's head in. He thought they had a deal. He just couldn't see
the fucking point of doing anything any more. Then, Lisa and John got
into a row with the staff at the drugs clinic, and they got banned —
except that John was wearing Matthew's hat, so they banned Matthew
instead of him. Matthew wasn't that bothered. They just went back down
Bethnal Green Road.
And that's how Matthew ended up back in court. Not
that they got nicked down there, just that Matthew couldn't see the
point of keeping his probation appointments, so he ended up with a
letter telling him to turn up at Thames magistrates court. That's a
hassle. He's got to find this probation officer with the secret address.
But before he does that, he's got to go back down Bethnal Green Road and
get their £70 back off the little toerag that rode off with it this
morning.
And then what will this court hearing achieve? At what
point in a typical day do Matthew and Lisa and John stop and quietly
consider the impact of their behaviour on anybody else or on themselves?
At what point do they consider anything at all beyond finding some way
to get hold of £100 a day? Born and raised in chaos, they have been
punished before by the system, often for good reason, but never changing
their behaviour, occasionally becoming much worse. Surviving now in
chaos, at what point does the threat of punishment stop them committing
a crime?
There are signs of the government changing its track.
Following January's Carter report, it is setting up the new national
offender management system, which is to cut the rise in the prison
population. It wants to use new day fines — geared to the income of
offenders — and also its sentencing guidelines council to encourage
courts to use more fines for petty offenders. The Crown Prosecution
Service plans to extend the use of cautions by adding conditions to
them. But these moves are designed to take the pressure off the prisons
and the courts. None of them challenges the underlying assumption that
punishment is the primary tool of crime reduction.
Malnutrition
If they had been born 40 years earlier, Matthew and Lisa and John would
have been allowed to get clean drugs from their GP. John would not have
lost several fingers and half a lung from blood clots. Lisa would not be
suffering from malnutrition in the heart of one of the richest cities in
the world. None of them would be involved in stealing something like
£500 of property a day. As it is, they can turn to the NHS which will
offer them long delays, lots of paperwork, tight rations and lectures
about abstinence, or they can come to court to be punished.
The courthouse is busy again when Matthew and Lisa
turn up there a week or so later. An ulcerated old man whose bootlaces
are tied up round the ankles of his trousers, totters around the hall
looking for a lawyer. A fog of nicotine rolls out along the ceiling from
the smoking area. There are two televisions mounted on the walls: the
studio audience are clapping, the caption says: “Leave my lover alone.”
Matthew has got his act together and found the
probation officer who needed to see him, even without an address. And
the pre-sentence report is OK. It explains that Matthew missed the two
appointments because he was so upset about losing the baby and it
recommends another community sentence. Matthew's lawyer is good at his
job. Lisa and John sit in the public gallery, while Matthew takes his
place in the dock. The district judge has a dark suit, gold-framed
glasses on the bridge of her nose and pearl earrings. For two or three
minutes, she reads the report from probation. The court is quiet. “Yes,”
she says finally, in a voice just like the Queen's.
Matthew's lawyer starts: “I think it's worth
noting...”
But the judge cuts across him: “He was fortunate,
wasn't he, to be given a probation order in the first place?” She seems
irritated. The lawyer continues, reciting all the appointments which
Matthew did keep before he missed just two. The judge sits with her eyes
shut and cuts in again: “He was given the opportunity but he doesn't
seem to have taken it.” The lawyer quotes from the probation report and
explains that Matthew has had his baby taken from him. “Because he is a
heroin addict,” says the judge. The lawyer keeps making his points, the
judge keeps interrupting, Matthew is looking paler than ever. Then the
judge has heard enough.
“Mr King, will you stand please? You were given the
opportunity of doing a community penalty and you chose to lose contact
with...”
Now Matthew interrupts: “I been in contact with them.
I give them my new address. I give them my mobile number. I been down
there before this court business started.”
“You have had your opportunity. Now you will go to
prison.” Matthew stares blankly at her, as she hits him with it: “Three
months on each count.”
He turns towards the public gallery, breathless. Lisa
is on her feet. She knows prison is not the problem — it's having no
gear that is going to hurt him. And she knows he hasn't even got a pack
of cigarettes in his pocket to help him get through it: he was never
expecting to go to jail. Two security men are closing in on the dock.
Lisa leans out of the public gallery, her cigarette pack in her hand,
Matthew reaches out to grab them, the security men close in, Matthew
stretches quickly, Lisa strains towards him, can't reach, the cigarettes
fall on the floor. Lisa goes berserk, barges into the court, shouts that
the judge is a scumbag, but the judge has gone. And so has Matthew.
Matthew has been brought to justice.
Minutes later, Lisa and John slip away into the
streets. They are in a hurry, just like they were when Lisa tugged
Matthew away from court a few weeks ago. They have to get down to
Bethnal Green Road. On the way, they have to find £100 from somewhere.
Justice has been done today. Chaos has encountered order. And what did
we achieve?
At his request, Matthew King's name has been changed
How the courts increased their sentences:
- During 2002 all courts gave immediate prison
sentences to 111,600 offenders - a record
- During 1992 all courts gave immediate prison
sentences to 58,100 offenders
- During 2002 all courts gave community sentences
to 186,500 offenders - a record
- During 1992 all courts gave community sentences
to 102,400 offenders
How magistrates moved from fines to prisons:
- In 1992 magistrates fined 1,074,800 offenders
- In 2002 they fined only 894,300
- In 1992 magistrates jailed 10,300 offenders
- In 2002 they jailed 26,500
How the magistrates made community sentences more
punishing:
- In 1992 rehabilitation orders (then known as
probation orders) accounted for 41.5% of community sentences
- In 2002, they accounted for only 31% of community
sentences and only 2.2% of all magistrates sentences
Outcomes in London magistrates courts:
- 81.7% of defendants plead guilty;
- 8.9% are found guilty in their absence
- 7% are convicted after summary trial;
- 2.1% are acquitted after trial
- 0.3% are dismissed with no case to answer
Note: A community rehabilitation order (formerly
known as a probation order) requires the offender to stay in regular
contact with a probation officer for up to three years. In some
cases, the court may also require attendance for treatment or other
courses. A community punishment order (formerly known as a community
service order) requires the offender to perform up to 240 hours of
unpaid work.
By Nick Davies
16 April 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1190736,00.html
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