Saw a party election broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party this evening which featured superstar criminal advocate Paul McBride QC. He was on there following his well publicised defection to the Tories, complaining that criminals often only serve half the sentence they receive, and advocating (!) that those convicted should serve the full sentence they are given.

Which is absurd.

As I may have mentioned before, I’ve never done a day’s criminal law in my life, but I’m pretty sure that the Judges of our country do understand how this works. It’s not as if this is some big secret which is subverting the wisdom of the judiciary. If a Judge wants someone to stay behind bars for 2 years, then they will sentence the criminal for 4. The maths is not that hard.

Fair enough, your policy may be that you want criminals to spend more time in jail. But even then, setting a rule that you serve your full sentence has only one real effect, which is to rob the prison service of the ability to keep badly behaved prisoners in jail longer than those who have knuckled down, learned their lesson and generally paid their debts to society.

Which is absurd.

But just to keep Mr. McBride happy, the next case he’s defending, the Judge should send the accused down for twice as long as normal. He’d consider anything else to be a disgrace.