There’s an interesting piece in yesterday’s Times by Sir Ken McDonald, QC, the recently retired DPP. In it he takes the West’s (and especially Britain’s) politicians and legislators to task for getting the balance of the criminal justice system wrong, viz:

[…] If you mug someone in the street and you are caught, the chances are that you will go to prison. In recent years mugging someone out of their savings or their pension would probably earn you a yacht […] too many people and too many institutions function as though they are beyond the reach of the criminal law.

In Britain we had an additional burden: legislators who preferred criminal justice to be an auction of fake toughness […] So no one likes terrorists? Let’s bring in lots of terror laws, the tougher the better. Let’s lock up nasty people longer, and for longer before they are charged. Let’s stop medieval clerics winding up the tabloids. Let’s stop off-colour comedians outraging homophobic preachers. Let’s pretend that outlawing offensiveness makes the world less offensive.

This frequently made useful headlines. But it didn’t make our country or any other country a better or safer place to live. It didn’t respect our way of life. It brought us the War on Terror and it didn’t make it any easier for us to progress into the future with comfort and security.

Our legislators faltered because they seemed to ignore the fact that what makes good politics doesn’t always make good policy. And they didn’t want to tackle the more complex issues that really affect safety in people’s lives. It was easier to throw increasingly illiberal sound bites at a shadowy and fearsome enemy.

In Britain, no one has any confidence that fraud in the banks will be prosecuted as crime. But it is absolutely critical to public confidence that it should be […] Do people believe this will happen? No, they don’t […]

Forget the paranoiac paraphernalia of national databases, identity cards and all the other liberty-sapping addictions of the Home Office. Forget the rhetoric and do something useful. If the Government really wants to protect people beyond armoured-vest posturing, here is the opportunity […]

Let’s have fewer terrorism acts, fewer laws attacking our right to speak frankly and freely. Let’s stop filling our prisons with junkies, inadequates and the mentally damaged. How apposite in 2009 to have, instead, a few more laws to confront the clever people who have done their best to steal our economy.

Hat-tip: Bystander at The Magistrate’s Blog