Yes, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head Captain. I noticed the change in attitudes around ’95 whilst working in mental health. I jumped before I was pushed. Don’t agree with the education and life experience though; having plenty of both made you realize you’re banging your head on the wall, whilst those without are still struggling to convince the various HR departments that according to section blah blah they’re reformed and generally getting nowhere.

In the ROA stakes some won whilst the majority lost; back to the declaring v not debate then.

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With all due respect
Regards

Marmite

Ditto Andy.

The reforms didn’t span everybody as some hoped, but a few got something out of it. People like us lost, (big sentences), as did more than a few on the SOR.

There’s justice and there’s politics; the two are often incompatible, but at the end of the day, is justice is in the eye of the beholder? Those having been sentenced to 3.5 years will now consider justice to have been done, whist those given 4.5 years won’t. Swings and roundabouts. In the absence of justice that suits all, we just have to get on with it.

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With all due respect
Regards

Marmite

I would assume its a national thing and yes, ongoing convictions.

IF it does come in it’s quite expected, a lot of tinkering around the lower fringes. It’s welcome of course and will benefit some, but again we have this divide of ‘you can be reformed, but others can’t’. It was never going to be a revolution across the board from the moment McNally told us the government were ‘considering’ Dhakotia’s proposals. There was nothing to consider, they (the government) agreed with Dhakotia and you could see the backtracking as they spoke. So, we have LAPSO and a few bits added on.

The whole tone of the article is rather depressing to me and implies that ‘serious’ criminals, (those having served large sentences), ought not to be rehabilitated because of that seriousness. My point is that after 10 or 20 years crime free you can’t still be calling them ‘criminals’. However, as Stig rightly points out, we’ll believe it when we see it. It was what I expected, it will lower the ROA numbers, get some back into work, but morally the rehabilitation concept hasn’t changed and I await the backlash (?) to all this if they do try to get it in the bill.

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With all due respect
Regards

Marmite

Entirely expected and there will be worse to come when the tabloids get started. He talks of 'thousands' taken off the ROA, I and many others thought a 'revolution' might contain millions! Read the comments on your link, that's the start of the backlash.

A dead link Crabbies, or is my computer being blocked from access?

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With all due respect
Regards

Marmite

Cheers Crabbies, got it now, I thought I was being blocked again. A consequence of living in certain countries. As Stig says read the comments. I'd answer but I'm not subscribing to The Sun! This isn't a done and dusted deal yet by any means and there's time yet to alter what Clarke proposes. Basically all it's done is knock back the tiome periods a little, good for some and not for others. The backlash in the commons is what comes next!

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With all due respect
Regards

Marmite

Actually I think the reforms apply only to England and Wales. But it is very likely that the Scottish Parliament will follow suit on this pretty swiftly.

Just to confirm here - on page 8 of the MoJ business plan, the LASPO Act provisions on the ROA are to be commenced in May 2013:

www.number10.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/MOJ-2012-Business-Plan.pdf

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The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea...you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made (Tony Benn).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16857388

Here's what we've been waiting for - it isn't quite as good as I'd hoped but there is always the potential for people in parliament to push the Government a bit harder.

Summary:

Community order sentences, currently live for five years, would be spent after a year;

the period for sentences of up to six months in custody would reduce from seven years to two years.

Sentences of 30 months to four years, which are currently never spent, would only remain live for seven years under the plans.

But it isn't quite as dramatic as it sounds, because whilst the current ten-year period runs from the date of conviction, the proposed new period runs from the end of the sentence imposed.

But the rules on sentences of more than four years, also currently never spent, would not change.

I personally don't think this goes far enough - longer term prisoners won't benefit. What do others think?

I suspect that is what the Government was thinking when it backed off from the Breaking the Circle/Dholakia recommendations (two/four years buffer across the board on all determinate sentences). This is a step in the right direction... but not a big enough step. I can see how it moves the 'spent' date nearer for shorter term prisoners and therefore the carrot isn't dangled too far in the distance for potential desistance to occur. But I don't see the logic behind asking people who've served longer sentences in prison to have to 'prove themselves' for longer once they're out. Effectively this makes the informal 'punishment' (employer/insurer discrimination) longer for those that have already received a longer formal punishment - i.e. you get punished more for having been punished more.

Generally if people have stayed out of trouble for two years after release, that is going to be pretty indicative of their longer term behaviour. Those who continually re-offend and bounce in and out of prison tend to do that re-offending pretty quickly - but after two years surely their regular pattern of behaviour has changed? These were the conclusions in Breaking the Circle. However, as Ben and Stig say, the threat of the media backlash hangs over the government on law and order like the Sword of Damocles. They are terrified of headlines which would say (with boring inevitability) "rapists and paedophiles to be allowed to conceal their sickening crimes". Now if you commit a really serious offence, you should expect some serious bird - but we aren't talking about sentencing guidelines here - we're talking about the issues after crime and punishment.

Regarding the comments in the Sun - we should of course remember that politicians are not quite so afraid of News International any more. Who would have thought 12 months ago that the News of the World would be dead, Sun journalists (including a former editor) would be on police bail, and Rupert Murdoch would have been hauled in front of a parliamentary select committee and have had a custard pie thrown in his face on national television?! And that's before all the dirt that's emerging through Leveson. Come the next general election a political endorsement from the Sun will like be being getting a seal of approval from the Chuckle Brothers - no one will take it seriously.

Try as they might to stir up outrage - most reasonable people still agree that ex-offenders deserve a second chance. Just because some very vocal people take offence - it doesn't make them right and doesn't make them the majority. As for Phillip Davies MP (rent an 'outraged' quote for the Mail and the Sun) - KC doesn't take him seriously and nor does anyone else in the cabinet. In fact, he's so back bench that he's nearly out with the bins from the parliamentary tea room. The best he can do is get a place on the DCMS select committee - and even then he's usually made to sit as far away from the Chairman as possible.

Interesting that the Sun isn't attempting to generate quite as much 'outrage' over the NHS bill, or the cuts to public services, or tuition fee increases.... anyone would think they were trying to generate hatred of unpopular minority groups in order to let a bigger agenda slip through un-noticed!

It is actually going to be 24 months on the end of the sentence expiry date for custodial sentences of less than 6 months. So the full term here with the 'buffer period' added on is anything up to 30 months.

Now granted, that isn't the same a 3 year community order followed by 12 months but it is worth bearing in mind that those who get short custodial sentences are probably much more likely to lose their home and their job (if they have one). Plus they have to spend time in a grotty local prison - so I'd say it's not really a better situation!

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The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea...you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made (Tony Benn).

Congrats Turbo.  What experience do you have with investment banks; are they now increasingly performing basic checks instead of enhanced?

RG - try not to look at rehabilitation periods as "second sentences" (although I know they feel like it sometimes).

It would be wrong, in my view, if we had a system which differentiated between different "types" of crime. The important thing is that a universal barometer is used - that being the sentence handed down - as being the litmus test for the rehabilitation period. That may mean that once person sentenced to ABH and one sentenced to GBH get the same disclosure period, but that's because they received the same sentence, which follows from the "seriousness" of the specific circumstances (not necessarily the "title" under which someone was convicted)

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CS

I don't disagree with anything you've said. My point was simply that the exceptions have been there for 37 years, so based on your argument, the issue is not with the legislation, but rather to take up of it (i.e. employers attitudes to vetting etc). That isn't the same as disagreeing with the principle of exceptions to the act.

However, you'd be looking at this from a slightly skewed perspective if you think that the ROA changes won't help anybody, or that all jobs require standard or enhanced checks. I agree, too many do, and indeed too many professional ones, but not all.

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Captain Sensible - I entirely agree that the exceptions order is the "elephant in the room" as you say, but I think it's wrong to say that these changes don't achieve anything. The reality is that they will help a lot of people in a lot of circumstances.

However, you're right to point out the increasing number of exceptions, just as much as there is an issue with the upper threshold of 4 years.

Unfortunately, Government don't appear to be budging on either. You'll no doubt be aware of the Government's response to Sunita Masons Phase 2 report, which recommended refining the list of exceptions. This is the only recommendation that Government outright rejected!

Just to point out though - you make the point that "pre-96" (presumably referring to the Police Act in 1997) - however, the Exceptions Order has been in ever since the ROA was put into practice in 1975 - yes, the list has increased in scope, but it was very wide to start with from what I can see (although I wasn't around at the time!)

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turbo - that's great to hear. Bet you can't wait for the changes to come in.

cmoorejnr83 - no date available yet. Still 'Spring 2013' - sign up to Unlock's magazine, theRecord, and keep an eye out on our homepage/Twitter for when date is announced!

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