U.K. To Suspend 'Innocent Until Proven Guilty'

Just when you thought it couldn't possibly get any worse.

I've written a few times about the U.K.'s gobsmacking Anti-Social Behavior Orders (ASBOs), which allow police to take legal action against people they consider a nuisance even if the alleged evildoers have violated no law. In one short paragraph, the Economist offers a refresher course:

Troublemakers as young as ten years old can be barred from entering neighbourhoods, ringing doorbells, using public transport and mobile phones or even uttering certain words for a minimum of two years. Securing an ASBO is easy. Hearsay evidence, for instance, is admissible in court. The consequences of stepping out of line are weighty: a maximum of five years in prison for doing something that is not necessarily an offence in law.

For a fine example of how readily ASBOs are abused, here's the case of a pub owner who received one because a few people didn't like a parking sign he put up. ASBOs are also frequently issued against political activists.

Turns out, all that was just the beginning.

Now there's serious talk, at the highest levels of the British government, of a new 'super-ASBO' called a VOO. That stands for Violent Offender Order, but no actual violence need take place before police may identify and forcibly correct the would-be miscreant. VOOs will be aimed

...not only at people who have a history of violent behaviour or who have just left prison but also those who may not yet have committed an offence. According to a Home Office document outlining the plan, to be published next month, the measures will ban potential trouble-makers from certain areas or mixing with certain people, alert police when they move house and possibly force them to live in a named hostel, give details of vehicles they own and impose a curfew on them. The orders will last for at least two years, with no upper limit. Any breach could lead to up to five years in jail. Ministers believe police will apply for 300 to 450 VOOs each year.

Note how this estimate is already three to four times as high as when news of such an initiative first began making the British papers (and this blog) some seven weeks ago.

The VOOs are designed to be a "preventative measure", according to the Home Office paper. "It would mean that, where an individual was known to be dangerous but had not committed a specific qualifying offence, restrictions could still be placed on their behaviour," it says. Like ASBOs, the police or probation service would apply for the orders to the civil courts, where the threshold for proof is lower than in a criminal case. The document says the process will therefore be much quicker and hearsay evidence will be permitted to obtain an order against a suspect.

What does it take to be singled out for a VOO? Not much. Consider:

The paper identifies a series of "risk factors" that could lead to a person being targeted for the new order. These include a person’s formative years and upbringing, "cognitive deficiencies",

as well as

"entrenched pro-criminal or antisocial attitudes."

Hmm. Problems when growing up. Antisocial tendencies. Cognitive troubles. I'd say that covers 40 to 60 percent of the world's population (and 100 percent of adolescents).

Now, which seems more likely to you: that a Violent Offender Order will stop the next Kray Twins in their tracks, or that the full complement of Britain's bobbies will end up chasing after the equivalent of Bart Simpson and Beavis & Butthead?

There's more. A VOO can also be triggered by

...a person’s domestic situation or relationship with their partner or family, as well as more obvious signs such as "possession of paraphernalia related to violent offending (eg, balaclava, baseball bat), or extremist material".

Got that? Possession of extremist material. (Like what? Das Kapital? Mein Kampf? The collected works of Ann Coulter?)

Also, owning a baseball bat. I guess that means five million American kids are on the verge of becoming thugs and misfits.

As a commenter on this U.K. blog notes, Supernanny Tony Blair, a lawyer by trade, seems to lack any fundamental appreciation for British legal tradition. Blair believes that the very notion of justice is quaint and outdated, at least if justice means that people are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Want to talk about "anti-social attitudes"? Well then: What's more anti-social than turning a once-great nation into a two-bit police state, as Blair has consistently done? Want to talk about "cognitive deficiencies"? What's more appallingly dimwitted than criminalizing the possession of sports equipment and Swiss Army knives?

Obviously, I nominate Tony Blair to be the first recipient of a VOO.

Comments

[Martin Owens]

Don't look now, but there are plenty of
do gooders, busybodies and know it alls of the same stripe right here in the USA, just waiting for their chance.

It's already starting- speech codes at universities, the latest crusade to pass laws against trans fats....

I keep telling people- hang onto your guns.

[hambrough]

Baseball bats? No-one in the UK plays baseball. You say 'sports equipment', we say 'weapon'.

[Benedict White]

It gets worse. I am just working through some other government proposals, and they are probably going to use "profiling" to figure out who the "bad guys" are.

Where will they get this information? Well, the forthcomming database state.

I also spat blood over the idea that you could target people for "cognitive deficiencies". That is just plain fascist talk.

[GreginOz]

"Antisocial tendencies..."? Oh, you mean like being a rabid Libertarian, perhaps? Or, gasp, an Agorist? (www.agorism.com) Oh dear, here we go, here we go, here we goooooo.....

When the Law becomes Unjust, Resistance becomes Duty.

[William]

Hambrough, you seem to miss the point. Maybe baseball is an uncommon passtime on your side of the pond, but this law is essentially allowing the police to punish and individual for owning a oblong wooden object. Substitute baseball bat for cricket bat, 2x4, unassembled chairs and tables. You've banned guns, then knives, now you're looking seriously at heavy things. Normally I'd consider it hyperbolic to suggest that someone with pull in Britain is seriously considering a campaign against balled up fists or big boots but....

The problem is that you are allowing police to seriously curtail the liberty of individuals based on suspicion and hearsay. No trial, no real review, and a presumption of guilt.