The Musings of Harry

For anyone that doubts that fixed penalties for disorder are not a terribly good idea, consider this story, concerning a man who was issued an fine for criminal damage after a police car pulled up onto the pavement and ran over his foot.

Police shouldn’t be judges. Their job is not to ascertain guilt or to sentence. Their job is to gather evidence, charge people, and pass them to a court for judgement. When you give the police the power to arrest people, decide they’re guilty and sentence them on the spot — and to discourage them from questioning their judgement by forcing you to risk doubling your fine if you contest it and are found guilty — bad things happen.

This story is, admittedly, bizarre,  but there are others that are less strange and more disconcerting. Consider the student who called a policeman’s horse gay. Consider people who unwittingly wear the wrong kind of t-shirt, or who, even worse, wear one with a political agenda. Consider the case of a person who was overheard swearing in a private conversation.

Bear in mind, too, that these are just the ones we’ve heard about. How many of these manifestly unjust fines go unnoticed because people don’t realise they can be contested, or don’t have the resources to do so, or are scared about being fined more?

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2007 at 14:59 and is filed under Civil Liberties, Policing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.