andrewducker: (Default)
andrewducker ([personal profile] andrewducker) wrote2017-09-28 12:00 pm

Interesting Links for 28-09-2017

calimac: (Default)

[personal profile] calimac 2017-09-28 04:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Seems to me that what you're describing exactly defines missing the point.

Noble declaration that this case conformed with the law is completely disingenuous if other cases, especially involving BAME defendants, did not conform with (this interpretation of) the law.

The author is trying to ward off objections that the Oxford defendant got off unfairly. What fuels the protests which the author is trying to defuse? Answer: perceptions of inequity between cases: what the author would call not "conforming with the law." Does that perception reflect any reality? What is the pattern of sentencing here, in a broader selection of cases? That would address the point.
danieldwilliam: (Default)

[personal profile] danieldwilliam 2017-09-29 10:27 am (UTC)(link)
I think I understand what you think the point the author *ought* to be addressing is but I don't think they are aiming for the same mark.

And it's your remark about what fuels the perception which is relevant.

Having followed the series of articles by the Secret Barrister on sentencing for some time what I think they are aiming at is this; the press, in order to sell papers, and politicians, in order to garner votes, stir up outrage by suggesting that people who are "Not Us" are being treated *outside* the scope of the law when sentenced. By examining a couple of headline grabbing cases they are attempting to demonstrate that in fact all of these cases are being treated well inside the law. There don't appear to be any gross misapplications of the law.

They are not attempting to prove that there is no prejuduce in the English criminal justice system. They are attempting to demonstrate that the press and politicians can not be trusted to comment correctly on criminal justice matters and are manipulating us for their own financial and poltical aims. Is wide spread racial prejudice in the operation of the English criminal justice system a bigger or smaller story than the wholesale manipulation of the general public by headline writers for political ends? I guess that is a matter of taste but I think it is clear which the Secret Barrister is aiming at. Prejudice and propaganda are different things.

I'd track back through to the Bashir Case if you are interested in the handling of the treatment of BAME culprits.
calimac: (Default)

[personal profile] calimac 2017-09-29 01:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Sure, the author is aiming at something different than I think they should be aiming at.

And what I'm saying is, that what they're aiming at is missing the point.

I'm not going to track anything. I need someone who's knowledgeable about the law to do the tracking. This author is, but is failing to do it.

The Bashir case cannot help me. Its facts are too different. I can't tell if there's equity between white and BAME culprits if there are too many other different variables; I need a multiple-case survey of otherwise roughly identical cases.