42 day limit

Curly — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:41:08 +0100

I fear that the British government is becoming more dangerous than those it proposes to protect us from.

42: Now what was the question?

Jock — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:07:06 +0100

I simply do not understand the government's position on the forty-two day proposal for the time a suspect can be held without charge. I saw a blog post recently, but for the life of me can't remember where, that listed the equivalent period in other western democracies. I seem to remember seeing that the next highest limit in any country is fourteen days, and that most don't have any extension beyond their normal two day period for all suspects.

Correct me if all that is crap, but assuming it's not, what is it about the UK that means that we need to allow three times the number of days anywhere else on the planet - at least anywhere that could be called a "liberal democracy"? Why should it take our police and/or intelligence services three times as long as anywhere else's to stitch enough evidence together to charge someone?

I hear all sorts of excuses - the favourite seems to be that accessing electronic information forensically takes a long time. And sometimes these sound plausible. But one has to return to the question about why should it take our people three times as long? Or is there something the raw statistics, the legal position as opposed to the way it operates in practice, do not reveal. Do other countries have fewer rights enshrined elsewhere that somehow lets them cheat and hold people for longer than their laws appear to permit?

Obviously the US has Guantanamo Bay and other "black holes" elsewhere into which people could be "disappeared". And maybe I watch too much "Spooks" but I rather assume, conspiratious that I am, that we also have extra-judicial ways of "hiding" someone if the state wants it so. Or is that just not so, and this forty-two day detention idea is really an attempt to be "above board" where other countries aren't?

The Home Office's own figures show that 1165 people have been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 (admittedly that probably includes Walter Wolfgang and similar instances of overenthusiastic enforcement), more than half of them released without charge and only forty one convictions so far on Terrorism Act charges. The majority of the rest have been charged with something, presumably without breaching the existing, already too long, twenty eight days.

Just someone explain the rationale of forty two days, please!

Jock's Place - 42: Now what was the question? - Comments

42 day limit

42: Now what was the question?