The incredible law scribes working at the Home
Office, run by (ex) Communist Dr John Reid is working overtime with new and
re-inventive ways to detain and control the population of
The latest offering is the Super ASBO, whereby police will have the power to apply a curfew, movement restrictions, force you to live in a named hostel, have you placed on the violent and sex offender register BEFORE you even commit an offence. And any breach could lead to up to five years in jail.
These new “super-Asbo’s” will be aimed not
only at people who have a history of violent behaviour or who have just left
prison but also anyone who may not yet have committed an offence.
A Home Office document outlining the plan, to be published next month, says that 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 criteria for being targeted by this new
law include a person’s formative years and upbringing, “cognitive
deficiencies”, “entrenched pro-criminal or antisocial attitudes,” “a history of
substance abuse or mental health issues”, as well as more obvious signs such as
“possession of paraphernalia related to violent offending (eg, balaclava,
baseball bat), or extremist material”.
My interpretation of this is, if you’re not quite as quick as everyone else you’re a target, if you mix with the wrong crowd, you’re a target, describe antisocial attitudes, does that include bloggers? And if you like to spend Sunday afternoon in a chill wind with your son, wearing a balaclava and playing baseball (perhaps cricket bats are exempt?), you’re a target, and just what the hell extremist material will consist of is totally open, but it does have political connotations rather than violent ones.
The police or probation service (which is
to be outsourced like traffic wardens with targets to meet), would apply for
the orders to the civil courts, where the threshold for proof is lower than in
a criminal case, the process will therefore be much quicker and hearsay
evidence will be permitted to obtain an order against a suspect. Sounds just like the old communist laws, and
before that Nazi ones.
The reasoning: A report out today, by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in association with The Sunday Times, reveals that almost half of the offenders caught by police are getting away without a court punishment, robberies have risen and murders are up by a third, even though we already have more than enough laws to deal with them.
This new proposed legislation is not the answer. This new proposed legislation is not the answer to anything.
Whereas the plethora of laws made everyone
a suspect, now everyone in
Make for a better judiciary, yes, but not with draconian, totalitarian laws like this one, and the betting is that it will be exempt from the FOI so we will never know how many people they have rounded up or how it has been applied. It was a very similar law that was used by the Germans to round up not only Jews, but Gypsies, Romanies, the Mentally ill, petty thieves and robbers and put them into concentration camps.
The potential for another secretive catch all law allowing Government or Police abuse of power is enormous.
Once the government have criminalised
everyone with the array of totalitarian laws they have passed since coming to
power, it will by default mean that no-one will ever get a job, because the
Total
Control.
In a
free society, the rights and laws protect the individual from the government.
In a
dictatorship, the rights and laws protect the government from the people.
