Miscarriage of justice victims charged for jail stay

yellum

http://www.sundayherald.com/40592

Blunkett charges miscarriage of justice victims ‘food and lodgings’
By Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor


WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?

An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in British prisons.

On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn’t have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.

Blunkett’s fight has been described as “outrageous”, “morally repugnant” and the “sickest of sick jokes”, but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely “reasonable course of action” as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back ‘Saved Living Expenses’.

Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six. He spent 16 years behind bars for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA. Hill now lives on a farm with his wife and children near Beith in Scotland. He has been charged £50,000 for living expenses by the Home Office.

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uberwolf

:eek:

I keep thinking its Aprils fools day, first liverpool win then this.

I'm flabbergasted. If the victims of miscarriages are entitled to 30,000 per annum wage loss then maybe charging for living is reasonable, maybe, but fecks sake. That is outrageous otherwise.

Sparks

This is a joke, right?

Commissar

Does this happen often enough for it to be an issue?

ixoy

Have they completely lost it? It's not a comparable situation given that people would have earned money in the period that they were incarcerated. How can they pay when they have had no wage? I can't imagine the bill getting through. I wonder if Blunkett forgets this, as he drafts the proposal, dining on the taxpayer's income.

Stark

I hope this is a sick joke.

dr_manhattan

New labour show their true colours once again: Blunkett has always been a dangerous little pitbull, but I agree - this is *insane*.

As regards whether or not it happens often enough to be an issue... well actually I think there's a fair few miscarriages of justice in the past 20 years. Apart from the guildford four and the birmingham 6, there were also those wrongful imprisonments as a result of the social services/child abuse allegations in the early 90s. It happens a fair amount.

As has been suggested already, I think the victims should countersue for a wage equivalent to their annual wage: if they would have had to pay for room and board, then they would surely have *been* paid...

actually, social security payments for each year would amount to more than 3,000. So given that they were "unable to look for work" because of being locked up in ****ing broadmoor, why not claim 16 years dole?

I cannot believe this, honestly, it really has that april fools ring to it...

Manach

At last I have proof that it's the world that's insane and not me.

Zombrex

As far as I can tell from reading around he wants the right to deduct the cost of B&B from the compensation claims that wrongly convicted prisioners get from the government, since he argues they would have spent that anyway.

It has still got to be one of the stupidest things I have every read

Stark

Think he's missing the point, you're not compensation people for lost earnings, you're compensating them for lost freedom. You can't put a price on that.

Mighty_Mouse

Does anyone know if this is a joke or not?