The Secret Barrister
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29. The Howard League for Penal Reform, ‘Faint Hope: What to do about long sentences?’ (2016), http://howardleague.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Faint-Hope-What-to-do-about-long-sentences.pdf
30. Full Fact, ‘Has crime fallen regardless of changes to prison numbers?’, 24 October 2012, https://fullfact.org/crime/has-crime-fallen-regardless-changes-prison-numbers/
31. ‘Secret memo warns Blair of crime wave’, Sunday Times, 24 December 2006.
32. Ministry of Justice (2016), ‘Proven reoffending statistics quarterly: July 2013 to June 2014’, London: Ministry of Justice, Tables C1a and C2a. Cited in Prison Reform Trust, op. cit.
33. National Offender Management Service (2015), Annual Report and Accounts 2014/15, London: The Stationery Office. Cited in Prison Reform Trust, op. cit.
34. Ministry of Justice (2016), ‘National Offender Management Service workforce statistics: March 2016’, London: Ministry of Justice, Table 2, Ministry of Justice (2016), ‘Offender management statistics quarterly: October to December 2015’, London: Ministry of Justice Table A1.1. and 1.1. Cited in Prison Reform Trust, op. cit.
35. Ministry of Justice (2015), Prison and probation performance statistics 2014 to 2015.
36. Ibid.
37. Ministry of Justice (2016), ‘Costs per place and costs per prisoner’, NOMS Annual Report and Accounts 2015–16; National Offender Management Service Annual Report 2009/10, Table 1. Cited in Prison Reform Trust, op. cit.
38. ‘Prison book ban is unlawful, court rules’, Guardian, 5 December 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/05/prison-book-ban-unlawful-court-chris-grayling
39. In 2014, Chris Grayling refused to allow prisoners to cooperate with the Commission on Sex in Prison, set up in 2012 by the Howard League for Penal Reform with then Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s approval. Grayling was reported to have said, ‘Prisoners aren’t going to have sex on my watch.’ ‘Chris Grayling blocks inquiry into sexual assaults inside jails’, Independent, 3 May 2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/chris-grayling-blocks-inquiry-into-sexual-assaults-inside-jails-9321406.html
40. ‘“Staggering” rise in prison violence means youth jails are no longer safe, prison watchdog warns’, Independent, 18 July 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rise-in-prison-violence-youth-jails-young-offenders-no-longer-safe-watchdog-warns-government-a7846886.html
41. ‘Men’s prison conditions so “degrading” inmates “crunch cockroaches underfoot”, warns watchdog’, Independent, 25 July 2017, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-prison-conditions-men-degrading-poor-cockroaches-watchdog-home-office-bristol-inspectorate-howard-a7858626.html?amp
42. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales, Annual Report 2016–17, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-chief-inspector-of-prisons-annual-report-2016-to-2017
43. HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2015), ‘Changing patterns of substance misuse in adult prisons and service responses’, London: HMIP.
44. Ministry of Justice (2017) Monthly Population Bulletin, May 2017
45. Ministry of Justice (2017), Safety in Custody Statistics Quarterly, update to June 2017.
46. ‘“Staggering rise”’, op. cit.
47. Ministry of Justice (2016), ‘Safety in custody statistics quarterly update to December 2015’, London: Ministry of Justice, cited in Prison Reform Trust, op. cit.
48. Skills Funding Agency (2015), ‘OLASS English and maths assessments: participation 2014/15’, London, cited in ibid.
49. Criminal Justice Joint Inspection (2015), ‘A joint inspection of the treatment of offenders with learning disabilities within the criminal justice system – phase two in custody and the community’, London: HM Inspectorate of Prisons, cited in ibid.
50. Ministry of Justice (2013), ‘Gender differences in substance misuse and mental health amongst prisoners, Results from the Surveying Prisoner Crime Reduction (SPCR)’, cited in ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Ministry of Justice (2012), ‘Research Summary 3/12, Accommodation, homelessness and reoffending of prisoners’, London: Ministry of Justice, cited in ibid.
53. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (2015), Annual Report 2014–15, London: The Stationery Office, cited in ibid.
54. Ofsted (2015), The Annual Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills 2014/15, Manchester, Ofsted, cited in ibid.
55. Ministry of Justice (2015), Prison Annual Performance Ratings 2014/15, London: Ministry of Justice and Prison performance digest 2012–13, cited in ibid.
56. ‘Prison officers stage unofficial walkouts in England and Wales’, BBC News, 8 July 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36737016
57. ‘Liz Truss’s £9-per-hour prison officers won’t produce safe, human prisons’, Guardian, 3 November 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/03/liz-truss-prison-officers-prisons-staff-prisoner
58. ‘What is going wrong with the prison system?’ 26 January 2017, BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38596034
59. ‘Prisoner numbers will not be cut to achieve a political “quick fix”, Liz Truss to warn’, Telegraph, 13 February 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/13/prisoner-numbers-will-not-cut-achieve-political-quick-fix-liz/
11. The Courage of Our Convictions: Appeal
1. At 564–5.
2. R v Nealon [2014] EWCA Crim 574, http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2014/574.html
3. R (Hallam and Nealon) v Secretary of State for Justice [2016] EWCA Civ 355, Annex at [8].
4. Or, if you are particularly important, you might have the privilege of a five-strong Court.
5. Of 21,514 applications received between the CCRC’s inception in April 1997 and 31 October 2016, only 2.9 per cent have been referred to the Court of Appeal as convictions carrying a ‘real possibility’ of being quashed, and only 1.9 per cent of that total resulted in successful appeals. CCRC case statistics, http://www.ccrc.gov.uk/case-statistics/
6. Ministry of Justice, Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly, June 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/570022/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly-update-to-june-2016.pdf
7. Comparing the appeals figures from 2016 with Crown Court statistics from the same period is an obviously imperfect exercise, as the appeals dealt with in 2016 will not all relate to Crown Court proceedings that concluded in the same period. But in the absence of better data, it gives a rough perspective of the odds of successfully appealing.
8. Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), Annual Report 2015/16, https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cacd-lcj-report-2016-final.pdf
9. M McConville and L Marsh, Criminal Judges: Legitimacy, Courts and State-Induced Guilty Pleas in Britain, Edward Elgar, 2014.
10. Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), Annual Report 2015/16, Annex F.
11. ‘Unduly Lenient Sentence scheme ensuring justice for victims of crime and their families’, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/unduly-lenient-sentence-scheme-ensuring-justice-for-victims-of-crime-and-their-families--2
12. Court of Appeal (Criminal Division), Annual Report 2015/16, Annex F.
13. The Justice Gap, ‘Our lack of care for victims of miscarriages of justice is nothing short of a scandal’, Mark Newby, June 2016, http://thejusticegap.com/2016/06/lack-compensation-victims-miscarriages-justice-nothing-short-scandal/
14. R (Adams) v Secretary of State for Justice [2011] UKSC 18, [2012] 1 AC 48.
15. Explanatory notes to Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, Part 13, Compensation fo
r miscarriages of justice, §89, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2014/12/notes/division/3/8/1
16. R (Hallam and Nealon) v Secretary of State for Justice [2016] EWCA Civ 355.
17. R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, ex parte Bateman [1994] 7 Admin LR 175.
18. ‘Rail delays: New plans to compensate passengers’, BBC News, 13 October 2016, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37638802
12. My Closing Speech
1. See ‘Youth Proceedings Advocacy Review: Final Report’, October 2015, https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/media/1712097/yparfinalreportfinal.pdf; Bar Standards Board Response, May 2016, https://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/media/1761020/youth_advocacy_review_report_may_2016.pdf
2. HM Inspectorate of Probation, Transforming Rehabilitation: Early Implementation 5, p.20, http://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/05/Transforming-Rehabilitation-5.pdf
3. HM Inspectorate of Probation, Quality & Impact inspection: The effectiveness of probation work in the north of London, p.4, https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprobation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/12/North-of-London-QI-Report.pdf
4. HM Inspectorate of Probation, ibid., p.20.
5. ‘“The job used to have integrity”: readers on Britain’s probation services’, Guardian, 9 December 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/09/the-job-used-to-have-integrity-readers-on-britains-probation-services?CMP=twt_gu
6. ‘Independent criminal advocacy in England and Wales: A Review by Sir Bill Jeffrey’, May 2014, p.5, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/310712/jeffrey-review-crivminal-advocacy.pdf
7. ‘Courts are running out of qualified judges, peers are told’, Guardian, 1 March 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/mar/01/courts-are-running-out-of-qualified-judges-peers-are-told
8. Section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
9. Section 35A of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988.
10. R v Chambers [2008] EWCA Crim 2467 at [70].
11. Section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.
12. ‘Harriet Harman calls for ban on lawyers asking rape victims about their sexual history after Ched Evans’, Evening Standard, 24 March 2017, http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/harriet-harman-calls-for-ban-on-lawyers-asking-rape-victims-about-sexual-history-after-ched-evans-a3498921.html
13. Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill, https://publicavtions.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/2015-2016/0034/150034.pdf. Hollobone told the House, ‘I had wanted to call the Bill the “Foreign National Offenders (Send Them All Back) Bill”, but that was not allowed by the parliamentary authorities.’ Hansard, 11 March 2016, col 545, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmhansrd/cm160311/debtext/160311-0001.htm
14. Section 444(1A) of the Education Act 1996.
15. Section 71 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
16. Section 1(3) of the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc) Act 1985.
17. Section 127(1) of the Communications Act 2003.
18. ‘Metropolitan police solved just 6% of burglaries last year’, Guardian, 21 August 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/21/metropolitan-police-burglaries-labour-budget-cuts-conservatives
19. Ministry of Justice, Offending history tables, Table Q6.3 (September 2016).
Acknowledgements
I don’t profess to know much about such things, but a series of acknowledgements by an anonymous author to people whom they do not know and have never met strikes me as inherently odd. Nevertheless, if I might be indulged in my strangeness, I would like to put on record my eternal gratitude to those from whose wisdom and generosity I have benefitted more than I can express on paper.
Thank you to my wonderful agent Chris Wellbelove, who dragged me out of the blogosphere and into ink, and to my brilliant editor, Jamie Coleman, for their trust, guidance, ingenuity and infinite patience in herding an obstinate barrister through the contours of the literary world, an exercise akin to shepherding kittens up the Travelator on Gladiators. I am further indebted to the expertise of Chloe May and Laura Carr in Editorial Services, who actually made this into a book, to Liz Marvin for her eagle eyes in the copy-editing process, and to Hannah Corbett and Dusty Miller for drumming up more publicity than is good for my ego.
This book would not have come into being but for my blog and the attention generously lavished on it by a number of ‘Twitter friends’. To name individuals would risk inevitably leaving out many, without whose support, advice and criticism my online presence would have amounted to screaming into a void. However, I would like to give special thanks to Matthew Scott and David Allen Green, the big beasts of the legal blogosphere, whose support at the beginning (and thereafter) exposed my writing to a much larger audience than was probably deserved. I hope that the many others to whom sincere gratitude is due know who they are.
Further thanks are owed to the commissioning editors who have entrusted column inches to an anonymous legal loudmouth, especially Laura Clenshaw, Barbara Speed, Felicity Morse, Serena Kutchinsky, Katie King and Jasper Jackson.
A number of people have been incredibly kind in agreeing to read parts of the manuscript and contribute feedback and ideas which have been utterly invaluable. In particular, I would like to thank Dr Hannah Quirk and Dr Philip Handler from the University of Manchester; Zoe Gascoyne of Quinn Melville Solicitors; Penelope Gibbs of Transform Justice; Matt Stanbury of Garden Court North chambers; Lyndon Harris, the Final Word on all matters criminal sentencing; Andrew Keogh of Crimeline, the font of all criminal law knowledge; and last, but certainly not least, Mary Aspinall-Miles, for help and advice of a volume and quality that should really attract a fee (legal aid rates only, I’m afraid). Sir Henry Brooke, the Court of Appeal judge and tireless campaigner for access to justice, whose energy, commitment and compassion were universally acknowledged by all in the justice system, sadly passed away in January 2018. He had generously granted me permission to fill the gaps in my own legal and historical knowledge from his peerless blog, a mark of the kindness for which he was known and will be remembered. On the shoulders of such giants I hope to tentatively perch.
Any parts of this book that are well-received are almost certainly down to the efforts of the above. All misconceived opinions, errors and omissions are my own.
To those working in criminal justice – the lawyers; the judiciary (professional and lay); the police; the tireless and underappreciated administrators, caseworkers and lawyers of the Crown Prosecution Service; the staff of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service; and to all of those who rely on the system – the defendants, victims and witnesses of today and tomorrow – I offer my sincere and unending admiration for your fortitude, and all the good that you do. I hope that it is clear that, when I criticize the inadequacies of our system, I do so not intending to bury those who toil within, but to praise them. They all, each and every one, deserve better.
And finally, some form of thanks is probably warranted for the person who inspired this entire reckless enterprise; who compelled me, out of a heady cocktail of love and frustration, to start a blog, imperil my professional reputation and inflict my misanthropic lawsplaining on the digital world. I owe you more than I let you know. — SB
The Secret Barrister is a junior barrister specializing in criminal law. They write for Counsel magazine, New Statesman and iNews and have written pieces in the Sun, the Mirror and Huffington Post.
In 2016 and 2017, the Secret Barrister was named Independent Blogger of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards.
First published 2018 by Macmillan
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