CNJ COMMENT: Those at bottom of the ladder are facing mob justice

Published: 18 August, 2011

NOTHING throws more light on a divided borough than the heavy police raids in the Denton and Gospel Oak estates on Sunday and Monday.

In these raids, police dug up looted goods as well as cash tills buried in the gardens of these estates.  

Late Monday evening, police and residents in Gospel Oak faced up to each other while a man fled over the roofs from the police.

Yet, if we may say, the rest of the borough slept on, unaware of the drama in the heart of Camden.

To some extent, all this symbolises the nature of the riots this week – often, but not obviously in all cases – they were an eruption, albeit chaotic and anarchic, by those at the bottom of the ladder.

Many of those drawn to the riots last week then behaved criminally. 

Behaviour can change once one is in a crowd or a mob – boundaries one would not normally cross simply seem to dissolve.

This does not excuse criminal acts, it offers some kind of an explanation.

Yet, those in high office – in political or judicial circles – from whom one should expect rational reactions, appeared to have followed the very mobs they condemn.

The result is an application of “political” law and sentencing. Something near to mob justice.
The words of that greatest of our jurists in recent decades, the late Lord Chief Justice, Tom Bingham, ring true today.  

Referring to sentencing in his last work, The Rule of Law, he berates any form of “unconstrained” or “arbitrary” sentencing.  

A judge who indulges in arbitrary sentencing is engaging in a whim or acting in a capricious manner – in other words acting  subjectively.  

Yet, this is exactly what many judges did this week – jailing men and women  for six months for stealing goods worth pennies, or to four years for a Facebook entry, a sentence often meted out for manslaughter.  

Of course, there were the “aggravating factors” of a riot, but were they enough to ignore Lord Bingham’s warnings?

Sentences like these chip away at natural justice.   

Inevitably, a backlash is building up among libertarians and human rights advocates.

Unhappy, too, is a slowly emerging opposition among Lib Dem MPs which is to be welcomed.

It is possible they may even link up with Ed Miliband who appears to be striking out on his own, ready now to throw off the shackles of many of the faulty policies he inherited from Blairite Labour.

Here is one emerging light on the horizon.