Remember UK Train Rage Lady?

Nope, Theyd be tossed in the slammer......

The law in England is enforced based on skin color.

 

Unlikely that they would abandon a case for that reason if there was sufficient evidence for a conviction, but an initial CPS assessment for bringing charges is just that - an initial assessment conducted at the first examination, and the question is examined in more detail by the CPS later. It's not particularly unusual for them to drop charges at a later date.

The police force in question apologised and payed him £7000 in compensation. Whether the actual officers were punished I don't know, but I doubt it in a case like this. It probably hasn't done their long-term career prosepcts much good on the basis of having that on their records, of course, but I would have thought it more likely that they (and other officers) were given additional training in how to deal with such things in future in the light of what happened (and, in fact, new guidelines were issued to the police after a few accusations of them not interpreting the law correctly in this kind of instance). While I certainly don't condone them making the mistake they made, in all likelihood it was just an honest mistake by police officers just trying to do their jobs (and possibly in the light of guidelines that weren't guiding them very well, considering that they were subsequently changed) - it's not necessarily a reason for them to be heavily disciplined or punished as individuals (it's not as if they beat the guy up or anything, or exhibited any particular malice towards him, just wrongly arrested him because they had got the interpretation of the law wrong - there's no suggestion that he was 'mistreated' in police custody or anything, jsut that he shouldn't have been there).

 

56 days in jail for a racist tweet? Yet, Muslims are let go for severely beating whites? This is UK justice?



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It certainly appears that way.....

 

I haven't said it's impossible, just that it's extremely unlikely if they have a case. It's much more likely that the effect of the media attention is to get them to look at the case more closely (earlier than the would otherwise have done, in the run-up to an actual trial) to make sure that their initial assessment was correct. That looks to me like what has happened in this case (the Daily Mail will no doubt suggest 'it was us wot done it', but media outlets, especially reactionary populist tabloids like the Mail, are always prone to blow their own trumpets as far as they possibly can, and well beyond any semblence of reality! You may not remember the 'it was the Sun wot won it' stuff after Blair's first election victory, but that's an example of what they like to do to prove just how important and influential that they are, even if it isn't actually true!).

Absolutely agree, but I don't agree that the public order acts are actually bad laws (and certainly not the worst laws that we have i the UK by a long way!). Generally they seem to work pretty well - the idea of the law generally is that people can express opinions on issues like race and homosexuality (and disability, and so on), but they can't abuse and harass people or threaten or incite violence on the basis of such things (and nor can they actually discriminate against individuals on that kind of basis, of course, but those are separate laws). that doesn't mean they are 'perfect' of course, nor that they are always perfectly applied, but that's true of any law, and the 'race' laws are no better or worse than any others.

The misunderstanding, though, is that people aren't allowed to 'express their opinions' on race or immigration according to UK law, and that isn't the case. They are. They just have to do so in an appropriate manner, without actually abusing, harassing or threatening individuals of other races on the basis of their race. That misunderstanding seems quite common in the US, of course, but is also seen here in the UK, and is, I think, the root of the over-application of 'political correctness', and the concerns about 'being seen to hiold the wrong opinion' that are actually unjustified in terms of the law itself.

It's entirely possible that they would avoid jail time, depending on the circumstances of the specific case and the individuals. It has to be remembered that we have a lower relative prison population here than in the US, precisely because we are less likely to send people to prison for things - things that might be expected to mean 'automatic jail' in the US, particularly in terms of short sentences, may well not result in actualy jail time here, but in other punishments (including suspended sentences, community service and fines).

That doesn't mean that courts always get sentences perfectly correct in every case, of course, buit I don't think that anybody could seriously suggest that any court system in any country is 'perfect' in that sense, and everyone knows that some judges are more prone to be 'harsh' than others, within the sentencing guidelines given to them. That doesn't make any individual case evidence of 'racial differences' in the system, though - it would have to be a much, much wider study than a few highlighted media cases to demonstrate anything like that kind of issue, obviously.

Using obviously erronious and false examples to 'prove' that there are problems, though, only undermines the debate. Other more 'normal' explanations need to be looked at and considered first. It's like the ghost-hunting programs on TV - any little thing is always leapt on and explained as firm evidence of the 'supernatural', rather than having a proper logical investigation of the observed phenomenon and circumstances in which it occurred to find and consider other more 'normal' and logical alternative explanations. To put it bluntly, even if there is genuine belief behind the assertions, it's a really, really bad way to try to 'prove' a point!

 

Well thank you very much.

But it's not as if the police arrested the Christian man and hauled him off to jail and possible prison time for beating up homosexuals either, is it?

The thing is I don't want to see the taxpayers of Britain forced to pay £7000 for something they didn't do.

It was the hypersensitive police who screwed up and the money should come out of their pockets directly.

 

Look, a guy gets 56 days for a racist tweet, and Muslims get nothing for severe hate crime beatings. If you can't see injustice there, then you are simply being purposefully obtuse.

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The Muslims didn't get "nothing", the custodial part of their sentence was suspended. That said, you are quite right that there is an inconsistency between these two sentences.

What is not clear is the reason(s) for that inconsistency. Your suggestion of PC/racial bias is in fact only one possibility. I suggest the fact the racist tweets were targeted at a famous footballer who had just suffered a potentially fatal medial condition could have been a powerful factor in the relatively strong sentence in that case (not that this would necessarily be a good reason either). After all, I'm sure there are racist tweets put out there every day, in all directions without as much as an arrest.

I'm not claiming this definitely was a factor or that it would have been the only one. I am just pointing out that there are other equally viable reasons for the inconsistencies you're highlighting so to jump to any definitive conclusion without specific evidence is wrong.

 

Clearly, there is a general PC bias against whites concerning sentencing in HC cases. One judge used white self-defense as a reason to let the Muslim women to avoid jail.

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Please read what you're actually saying here. Would you let any other poster get away with such a logical gap?

 

Joe, we both know that I've used several cases as examples including a man jailed for 50+ days for a mere tweet. Meanwhile, Muslims have gone free for severe beatings of whites in the UK.

It is a PC outrage.

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This guy got years for a racist web rant. He got more for the rant than he got for child porn. But, he did not severely beat anyone.

I believe that we can see a pattern of acts by the CPS and the courts. The CPS refuses to charge for the hate crime, and the court ignores the racial element and lets the non-whites off the hook as far as jail time is concerned.



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Yet, again, no severe violence, just a hate speech violation and jail time.


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That particular set of racist tweets, and the circumstances in which they were posted, were exceptional (and frankly offended every decent human being that saw them - they weren't 'expressing a racist opinion', they were just seriously nasty and abusive - some of it is here*warning - it's offensive stuff*). That said, I'm not suggesting that they merited a prison sentence rather than any other punishment, but in fairness I think every jurisdiction in the world is struggling to keep up with new technologies and things like twitter, and working out quite how to deal with them, and how to judge the severity of 'crimes' committed in that kind of context (and every jurisdiction, including the US, has some laws regarding what you can and can't say about other people in terms of compensation for damage done, even if they are 'civil' rather than 'criminal').

No, I don't think he should have got that sentence, but that doesn't mean that it is directly comparable with other individual examples to demonstrate 'bias' in the legal system. Each case is judged by the courts on its own merits - to say that one case plus another case means 'discrimination', regardless of other factors in the cases, and regardless of whther the courts got the sentences right in those particular cases. As I said, you would need to have a much, much wider study than that, and trying to 'prove' such things with individual sensational cases only serves to kill the real discussion about the real issues.

 

How has the political will to do the study in the UK?




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I doubt anybody has the political will particularly, since it's not an issue at the forefront of political thought at all. That's probably why it hasn't been done. It would have to be an extremely wide-ranging and at the same time detailed (on a case-by-case basis) study, and would take alot of time and money to do it. Without there being any particular pressure to do it from the public (which there isn't), it's probably not going to get done. Certainly not in the current climate, I would think - there are much higher priorities for time and money than something like that.

 

And you have laws which dictate what you can, or cannot, do. I understand I can be arrested for not crossing a street in the 'right' place in America. How is that not encroaching on my freedom? Oh, by the way, the US Constitution is neither infallible, nor is it written in stone...

 

I daresay there are sentencing inconsistencies in white on white crimes too. What do you think?

 

By allowing injustice, the establishment empowers the far right and the racists. That's the classic mistake that the UK establishment is making. They are circling the wagons, and causing real problems in the long run. Wouldn't openness and fairness be a better option?





[video=youtube;bIY5l89JFpE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIY5l89JFpE[/video]

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I'll listen to your case, examples, and evidence.

 

Openness and fairness is always the best option, of course, but there is nothing to suggest that there is any of the 'injustice' and 'unfairness' that is being suggested on the basis of these few cases (that don't mostly stand up at all to even a brief bit of internet scrutiny from news reports anyway!). There's nothing being 'hidden', and nothing 'unfair' going on - openness and fairness is what is going on anyway, and if there's any doubt about that there are laws in the UK that have already been mentioned about the police and govenrment having no choice but to release figures and information if they are requested anyway.

There may be some legitimate concerns related to 'political correctness' that are worthy of discussion, and people being too nervous to talk about some issue because they think they might be construed as being 'non-PC', and so on, but these really can't be discussed sensibly when there are ongoing scurrilous and entirely unsupported allegations about the court system operating widely on a racially biased 'agenda'.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8501161.stm

 

Like I've told you before: listen to the police official's statement and read between the lines. You do realize that PC speech codes have an element of fear in them, right?

I've shown several outrageous cases- far more than the original two in the OP. The UK has a problem of hate law bias in charging and sentencing.

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So, we can conclude that there is a system wide problem without the study required by Cenydd?


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We can conclude that there are some issues of consistency with sentencing that have been ongoing for some time across the board in the UK. We need to be a little careful, of course, with statements made by politicians, and those made about sentencing by solicitors who are discussing the cases of their own clients, but this is not an unknown issue. We also need to note, of course, that the article is from Feb 2010, and the UK had a change of government a few months later, and that since then the new Justice Secretary (Ken Clarke) has been looking in varous ways at sentencing issues, so things might well have changed somewhat. In fact, there was a debate in Parliament on the 'Transparency and Consistency of Sentencing' moved by him in February of this year (I don't know if the video link from that page will work outside the UK, but if it does you should be able to watch the whole debate):
http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2012/february/transparency-and-consistency-of-sentencing/

Those issues being suggested in that article (I'll admit that I haven't watched the full parliamentary debate yet!) are to do with consistency in sentences across the board, though - nothing to do with any kind of 'race' issue. There is no suggeston there from anyone that the inconsistencies are related to the race of the perpetrator, or of the victim, or that any such inconsistency specific to race exists at all, in fact.

Edited to add: Feb 2010 is also a couple of months before the new Sentencing Council was created in order to 'promote greater consistency in sentencing'.