If only…

If only the judicial system in England and Wales could take on some of the values demonstrated by their American counterparts…

This video cropped up on my radar today and illustrates beautifully how we should treat those that fail to acknowledge that they should be accountable for their actions. Have a watch and see if you share the unstoppable grin that invaded my face during the last quarter of the video.

 

Courts in Community Centres – Nick Herbert’s Vision of the Future

Nick Herbert has, today, published details about his vision for the future of the criminal justice system. I have read, of course, this document with great interest.

I guess I was being a little naive when I thought to myself, ‘there couldn’t possibly be anything more for the Government to throw at Policing than Winsor’s reviews and his subsequent recommendation for HMCIC’. Describing himself as the jam in the sandwich between Ken Clarke and Teresa May (not a mental image that I would have chosen to inflict upon myself) Herbert began leading up to the main announcement with yet another defence of the current Police Review process coupled with the usual mud-slinging, directed at the Police Federation. He repeated, yet again, his suggestion that the Federation was resistant to change and, yet again, tried to discredit them by suggesting that they had actively opposed female Police Officers, traffic wardens and Community Support Officers.

How the Police Federation could have objected to the employment of female Police Officers when the first WPC was in post a year before the Federation was even created is a mystery to me…

Herbert went on to accuse the Federation of mounting a personal campaign against Tom Winsor and stated that ‘it wasn’t right to reward that campaign’ which to me sounds like Winsor’s proposed appointment as HMCIC is nothing more than a punishment for the perceived misbehaviour of the Federation, adding further weight to the comments of those that referred to the announcement as deliberately provocative.

Before moving the conversation to the future, Herbert had one final dig at events in the recent past. He states that when rioting spiralled out of control across many towns and cities the Police were capable of an effective response, but were simply too slow to do anything about it. He fails to acknowledge that, at very short notice, massive numbers of officers were moved across many counties to provide a barely-adequate defence to the ongoing mass disorder in our cities. This was not a failure of Police Forces involved, this was a direct result of having an already under-resourced Police service that will only be further hampered by the loss of another 16,000 officers over the three-year period of the reforms his Government initiated.

Now we get to the interesting part…