Would you have Ched Evans?

[The Great Mass Debater]

I heard on the radio that Andy Coulson is out after serving just 5 months of his 18 month sentence. Does anybody serve their sentence anymore? Or does our prison system need relieving that badly? Could we not just use the Isle of Wight as a penal colony?!  I saw a film once when I was a kid with Ray Liotta in it called 'No Escape'. Bit like Lord of the Flies but with prisoners. Seems like a good idea to me... (even though it was a crap film)

 

[eatonparkboy]

I heard on the radio that Andy Coulson is out after serving just 5 months of his 18 month sentence. Does anybody serve their sentence anymore? Or does our prison system need relieving that badly? Could we not just use the Isle of Wight as a penal colony?!  I saw a film once when I was a kid with Ray Liotta in it called 'No Escape'. Bit like Lord of the Flies but with prisoners. Seems like a good idea to me... (even though it was a crap film)

Mate of the boy Dave. Can't expect them to mix with criminals, or they will become just like them. His ginger accomplice got off of course. Spoil the boat race and the Home Secretary tries to have you deported.

 

[Moosheep]

I heard on the radio that Andy Coulson is out after serving just 5 months of his 18 month sentence. Does anybody serve their sentence anymore?

By default all except life (and indeterminate) prisoners are released at the halfway point of their sentence. Prisoners who are deemed to be of low risk to the public can then be released up to 4 months earlier than this on Home Detention Curfew (HDC) whereby they will be electronically tagged and required to stay at their home address during specified hours. Coulson would have fitted into this category. No sex offender will be given HDC.

Or does our prison system need relieving that badly?

Yes, absolutely. The system is full to bursting. Last week there were 9245 more people in prison than there were prison places! 

Moo 

 

[morty]

By default all except life (and indeterminate) prisoners are released at the halfway point of their sentence. Prisoners who are deemed to be of low risk to the public can then be released up to 4 months earlier than this on Home Detention Curfew (HDC) whereby they will be electronically tagged and required to stay at their home address during specified hours. Coulson would have fitted into this category. No sex offender will be given HDC.

Yes, absolutely. The system is full to bursting. Last week there were 9245 more people in prison than there were prison places! 

Moo

Why actually bother giving someone a sentence of a particular length then?

 

[eatonparkboy]

Coulson served less than one third of his sentence! 5 months of 18 months is not close to half way.

The picture below is him walking his dog yesterday morning after picking up the morning papers. No doubt Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday and cheekily the Sun on Sunday. That will teach him to break the law.

Rebekah Brooks probably threw him a party on Maxwell's yacht and invited Archer, the Hamiltons, Cyril Smith's relatives, Jowell, the Hamiltons, Mandelson although Andrew Mitchell told her to F@+!! off.

 

[Canaryboy]

By default all except life (and indeterminate) prisoners are released at the halfway point of their sentence. Prisoners who are deemed to be of low risk to the public can then be released up to 4 months earlier than this on Home Detention Curfew 

Coulson served less than one third of his sentence! 5 months of 18 months is not close to half way.

18 months divided by 2 = 9 months.

9 months minus 4 months = 5 months.

 

[Moosheep]

The picture below is him walking his dog yesterday morning after picking up the morning papers.

He will be wearing an electronic tag around his ankle. I am personally not convinced that staying at home for 12 hours a day is much of a punishment!

Moo

 

[eatonparkboy]

18 months divided by 2 = 9 months.

9 months minus 4 months = 5 months.

Sorry, I didn't read you post correctly. I thought it might well have been a favour to him. But now I see you can be sentenced to 18 months, which seems a fairly serious punishment, and serve 5 months.

The Lunatics have taken over the Asylum.

I do really think an electronic tag is not going to inconvenience anyone. People like Coulson think they are above the law. Idiots who burgle etc and get a tag are just plain stupid and wouldn't bother about a tag at all.

For reference, how is a tag monitored? By legions of thought police?

 

[Canaryboy]

I don't really see the sense in an electronic tag for this kind of offence or this kind of offender either.

I do see the point in a tag for the type of offenders who commit their crimes at night (so anti-social behaviour, people who get drunk and fight a lot in town centres, burglars, joy riders?).

The tag is monitored by a control centre, it tells a control centre when the offender is not within a certain radius of a device installed inside their home. So if they are not at home after their curfew they would be in breach of bail conditions so they could then go back to prison to serve their sentence. In fact one of the countries largest monitoring operations was at one point in Norwich, in that beautiful building near St Crispins roundabout / the Magdalen Street flyover. No idea whether it is still there (the firm may no longer have a contract, was a decade ago when I knew somebody who worked there). 

I think they can be effective, but I struggle to see the rationale behind using tags for somebody like Coulson. 

The prisons are simply full. Our population, and our criminal base, has grown faster than our prison capacity. It costs a hell of a lot of money to incarcerate people, so doubt it will change anytime soon. 

 

[eatonparkboy]

I cannot forgive somebody like Coulson who indirectly hacked into Milly Dowlers phone. I used to work on a newspaper and know that journalists are not the most morally correct people but to delete the messages on her phone to "free up space" just to dish the dirt on the family is no doubt beyond the tolerance of most criminals who are serving much longer sentences.

I would happily put the tag around his neck!

 

[Canaryboy]

I cannot forgive somebody like Coulson who indirectly hacked into Milly Dowlers phone. I used to work on a newspaper and know that journalists are not the most morally correct people but to delete the messages on her phone to "free up space" just to dish the dirt on the family is no doubt beyond the tolerance of most criminals who are serving much longer sentences.

I would happily put the tag around his neck!

Yes he's scum, but he has been made the News International scapegoat. We already know that phone hacking was going on at the NOTW long before Coulson was the editor, and we also know that Mazher Mahmood has been using entrapment to screw people over since 1991 (when he started at NOTW). 

So Coulson is a sacrificial lamb, to help create the perception that justice has been done and to get News International off the hook. No doubt he will be well looked after for 'taking one for the team', get people to think that there were a few loose cannons or 'bad eggs' and to take the focus away from News Corp's other publications. Most of the NOTW employees just got a job with the Sunday Sun, same paper different name! Including Mazher Mahmood, 

 

[Canaryboy]

Just before anybody asks how this is football related..... Glenn Mulchaire the man who actually hacked Milly Dowler's phone scored AFC Wimbledon's first ever goal.

Random fact of the day! 

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

I don't really see the sense in an electronic tag for this kind of offence or this kind of offender either.

I do see the point in a tag for the type of offenders who commit their crimes at night (so anti-social behaviour, people who get drunk and fight a lot in town centres, burglars, joy riders?).

The tag is monitored by a control centre, it tells a control centre when the offender is not within a certain radius of a device installed inside their home. So if they are not at home after their curfew they would be in breach of bail conditions so they could then go back to prison to serve their sentence. In fact one of the countries largest monitoring operations was at one point in Norwich, in that beautiful building near St Crispins roundabout / the Magdalen Street flyover. No idea whether it is still there (the firm may no longer have a contract, was a decade ago when I knew somebody who worked there). 

I think they can be effective, but I struggle to see the rationale behind using tags for somebody like Coulson. 

The prisons are simply full. Our population, and our criminal base, has grown faster than our prison capacity. It costs a hell of a lot of money to incarcerate people, so doubt it will change anytime soon. 

Isle of Wight and leave them to it - I keep saying it people! We could put all of the returning 'British' Jihadists on it to serve as a real deterrent. Paying off the population of the Isle of Wight to move them ashore would surely cost far less than HS2 will (with the same amount of people forcibly displaced) and would give the population something they would actually use and want instead of a vanity project for the government, so David Cameron and George Osbourne can hob-nob it with the French and the Germans at some hoity toity EU ball. It would also help build safer communities by properly removing the bad eggs from it, rather than steamrollering through them with a trainline nobody wants.

 

[eatonparkboy]

And under the guidelines of compensation paid in murder cases, Milly Dowlers parents would have received £11K or £5.5K each.

Their daughters killer, Levi Bellfield, received £4.5K for being assaulted while in prison.

Rather than put the criminals in an Escape from New York scenario, why not put the law makers.

 

[Crossdressing Canary]

Don't think anyone has mentioned this yet but both Evans and McDonald said that she consented to Evans joining in. In which case, if the jury found Evans guilty, they thought that McDonald was lying, so why wasn't he done for perjury?

 

[Gaffer]

Don't think anyone has mentioned this yet but both Evans and McDonald said that she consented to Evans joining in. In which case, if the jury found Evans guilty, they thought that McDonald was lying, so why wasn't he done for perjury?

At least one person is probably lying in most criminal cases but we could hardly 'do' them all for perjury.

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

Don't think anyone has mentioned this yet but both Evans and McDonald said that she consented to Evans joining in. In which case, if the jury found Evans guilty, they thought that McDonald was lying, so why wasn't he done for perjury?

Very interesting point. Bringing this back into the realm of football, its like when a keeper brings down a forward for a penalty and the ref decides to give him a yellow card. Err, its either a professional foul so its a straight red, or its just a penalty. There shouldnt really be a situation where this can be a yellow. Similarly if his evidence was discounted, it should have also been a mandatory perjury charge. Where's the consistency?!

 

[Gaffer]

Mandatory perjury charge? Some people have absolutely no clue about the criminal justice system. That's like saying every time someone is acquitted of rape the complainant must have been lying so should be charged with perjury.

 

[splutcho]

She may well have "consented" the point being she was too drunk to legally be able to consent.

 

[The Great Mass Debater]

Mandatory perjury charge? Some people have absolutely no clue about the criminal justice system. That's like saying every time someone is acquitted of rape the complainant must have been lying so should be charged with perjury.

I thought lying on the stand was perjury?