Absolvitor: Scots Law Online

You can now read my latest Yell.com blog post on EC law and minimum pricing plans for alcohol.

Enjoy (but in moderation)!

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

Following a suggestion by Prof. Dirk J. Vandewalle that they had been leaned on to deliver a conviction, three of Scotland’s most senior judges: Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and MacClean have taken the unusual step of writing a letter to the New York Times in which they deny that they were ever “under any pressure to return any particular verdict” in the Lockerbie Trial.

Isn’t it still a criminal offence to murmur a judge?

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

I’m now blogging on Yell.com! Exciting, no?

You can read my first post, all about the Gill Review, right here. Enjoy.

The online version of my website review in September’s Journal is now available. This month covers the websites of the Scottish Human Rights Commission and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Website Review (September 2009) “Human Rights Revisited”.

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

Local pressure group, Communities Opposed to New Coal at Hunterston (or CONCH) are to launch a legal challenge to plans for a new coal-fired power station at Hunterston. The judicial review of the plans is to be brought on the grounds that the Scottish Government have not consulted the public according to standards required by European law and that assessments that were carried out did not adequately examine alternatives to a coal-fired power station.

The campaigners claim that the Scottish Government have failed to comply with their obligations under the Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005 and the European Directive on Strategic Environmental Assessment (Directive 2001/42).

Maggie Kelly, of CONCH and a local resident, said: “The proposed power station would have a devastating impact on our community, damaging our health, our livelihoods and destroying the local environment. It would also mean unnecessary and damaging increases in Scotland’s CO2 emissions leading to further climate chaos which will affect us all: across Scotland and globally. Yet under the National Planning Framework, we have been denied the opportunity to object to this major development.”

Hunterston coal fired power station was a late addition to the Scottish Government’s National Planning Framework (NPF) and was first mentioned four months after the main consultation was closed. As a result the public were unaware that this major development was proposed until it was too late to comment. Once developments are named in the NPF it is almost impossible for people to object to them. People can influence details such as the design and landscaping when the application goes in, but basically the presumption is that the development will go ahead.

According to The Guardian the campaigners are to be represented by the Environmental Law Centre Scotland Limited, who appear to be hosted by Jon Kiddie’s Renfrewshire Law Centre (the law centre formerly known as Paisley) and about which I know nothing else.

Still, the fight seems a good one and therefore, good luck to all concerned.

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

Congratulations to Govan Law Centre on winning the prestigious Chairman’s Award at the Law Awards of Scotland 2009.

If you look very carefully through the picture gallery on the Awards website, you may find a pic of me, strutting my stuff on the dance floor at the party afterwards!

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

The World Prison Brief from King’s College London was released yesterday (you can read about Scotland’s prison stats here) and was the subject of much discussion in the news.

As report cards go, it didn’t make happy reading, according to the commentators. Our official incarceration levels have now overtaken even Turkey, to put us at the top of the Western European league table for banging people up (at last, something we excel at!). Actually Spain and Jersey lock up more people, but most of those are foreigners. Scotland leads the way in locking its own citizens away.

All of the commentary I have seen (e.g. this article in the Scotsman) decries this as bad news. An “international embarrassment” even. Rising numbers in prison, despite falling crime rates.

Okay, just pause a minute and consider that last sentence. Rising prison numbers, despite falling crime rates. Of course, there is another way of looking at those same facts. How about: crime rates falling as a result of rising prison numbers?

Maybe, just maybe, locking more people up prevents more crime? If you are in jail, you cannot commit more crime – and perhaps you being behind bars deters your friends and neighbours from following your path into a life of crime.

If so, the current ideas to stop putting people in jail and let them do community based disposals instead seems like a risky move. And I’m not just blindly speculating – a bit of careful internet-based research led me to an academic paper: “The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation” by Steven D. Levitt of Freakonomics fame.

It’s a little bit wordy and complex, but as far as I can work out the conclusions are as follows:

• increased prison populations appear to substantially reduce crime;
• the marginal costs of incarceration are at or below the accompanying social benefits of crime reduction;
• incarcerating one additional prisoner reduces the number of crimes by approximately fifteen per year.

The paper also suggests that, where feasible, rehabilitation or prevention are preferable to imprisonment (both from a cost-benefit and humanitarian point of view) but it is concerning that the policy debate in Scotland begins from a standpoint that prison “isn’t working” when a proper consideration indicates that (at least in terms of crime reduction) it is probably working very well indeed, thanks very much.

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.

The Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini Q.C. has asked appeal judges to increase the minimum jail terms which must be served by murderers, which would see the worst offenders receiving “rest of life” sentences.

The Crown has taken the cases of three men convicted of murder to the Court of Criminal Appeal, claiming that the sentences they received were “unduly lenient”.

At present, anyone convicted of murder receives a life sentence, but the sentencing judge must set a period – the “punishment part” – which must be served before the killer can be considered for parole. This system was introduced following the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights and informs the murderer of the minimum time he or she must serve in jail.

Angiolini told the court that an appeal case in 2002 had led to an understanding that the range of punishment parts available to reflect the seriousness of the crime was “a relatively compressed scale from 12 years to 30 years”. In that case, the murderer, who shot three people, had his minimum term reduced from 30 years to 27.

She continued: “As lord advocate I consider that is inadequate to reflect the wide range of conduct which may amount to murder and fails to reflect adequately the exceptionally serious cases of murder, particularly those involving multiple victims, terrorism or persistent sexual violence against vulnerable adults or children.

“I am asking the court to consider issuing a guideline opinion which will recognise that 30 years is not the absolute maximum punishment part and recognises explicitly that in some exceptional cases a punishment part which exceeds the natural life expectancy may be appropriate.”

This has been widely reported as a desire on the part of Scotland’s senior prosecutor to see killers “rot in jail” or for life to mean life in the most serious cases.

In England, the worst cases of murder can already attract “whole life” orders.

The close proximity in timing with the Megrahi case invites the impartial observer to draw parallels between the two. Of course, the Lord Advocate had lodged her own appeal against Megrahi’s sentence for undue leniency – an appeal which was subsequently withdrawn as academic following his compassionate release.

Although she did not put it in quite this way, the headlines have it that Angiolini has specifically demanded: “Let worst killers die in prison” (BBC News). And in giving examples of the types of cases which may attract the longest sentences, she specifically listed “those involving multiple victims” and “terrorism”.

Is this co-incidence or is the Lord Advocate telling us what she really thinks of Kenny MacKaskill’s decision?

Posted on Absolvitor: Scots Law Online.