Vulnerable at risk after Home Office fails to track those who have offended abroad

BBC: "British criminals may have been cleared to work with vulnerable people in the UK after committing serious crimes abroad, police chiefs have said."

The Sun Says: "When is someone going to carry the can at the Home Office.  Jails are in crisis. Murderers walk out of prison at will. Nobody keeps count of illegal immigrants.  Now we learn hundreds of rapists, murderers and child sex perverts convicted abroad have disappeared.  Their files were left in a box instead of being of entered into the Police National Computer.  Some paedophiles may already have jobs involving children.  It beggars belief — not that such outrages are taking place — we are used to that.  The incredible thing is, not one senior Home Office chief has publicly paid the price for gross professional negligence."

Comments

[depressedtory]

apart from john major's - and cameron's yet to come...

davis would unfortunately be much more incompetent than reid

[Laura Coomber]

Lst Chance to Vote: Please cast your vote today at:

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/6161847.stm?dynamic_vote=ON#vote_6161847

[Yet Another Anon]

davis would unfortunately be much more incompetent than reid
I'm sure that in many ways David Davis would be a very competent Home Secretary and probably at least as much so as John Reid.

This government has done a lot of good things on Crime and National Security such as extending times people suspected of terrorist involvement can be detained without trial, registers of ex-offenders in certain categories to make it easier to stop them getting contact with vulnerable groups and unsuitable work.

To further enhance security there need to be further provisions for detaining people considered dangerous even if they haven't actually done anything - if neccessary indefinitely, a National ID database based on biometric information, introduction of Capital Punishment, abolition of Parole and Open Prisons, giving prison authorities powers to deny release to prisoners who have completed their sentence if it is considered that they are unrepentant or otherwise could continue to be a danger. In addition there need to be far more police and far more surveillance of the general population. Offences under National Security or Terrorism legislation should be subject to mandatory death sentences - the same for all paedophiles, rapists, murderers and people causing extreme criminal damage.

The Human Rights Act should be abolished and the UK should leave the various liberal international Human Rights organisation that restrict the UK's ability to fight crime & terrorism.

[Denis Cooper]

We already have "indefinite public-protection" sentences, this from 2005:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1644689,00.html

"Meanwhile, in October this year, the 2003 Criminal Justice Act came into force. This stipulates that in addition to the normal fixed term, judges must impose a new 'indefinite public-protection sentence' on anyone convicted of a serious violent or sexual crime whenever they think there is 'a significant risk to members of the public' that the prisoner might re-offend. Large numbers of people found guilty of crimes such as arson, sexual assault or wounding - the Home Office estimates this number will be at least 600 a year - will spend much longer inside than they would have done prior to this legislation. The more dangerous you are thought to be, the longer you will serve, in effect being punished for crimes you're deemed likely to commit in the future, as well as those in the past. This represents a historic transfer of power: away from the judges and evidence tested in open court, towards the state and its forensic psychologists."

and only today there are complaints about too many being handed out:

"Judges use never-ending sentences too often, complains parole chief"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2539409.html

[Yet Another Anon]

The indefinite holding of people considered dangerous is only applying to people who have already committed an offence and when they reach the end of their sentence and only where they are classed as having a relatively small number of Personality Disorders, I feel that people who are considered dangerous even where they are not considered to be mentally ill or to have some form of Personality Disorder should be detained. The government is planning to extend abilities to detain people but require that they receive treatment - some people who are dangerous are untreatable, but such people should be detained anyway and in the days of the old asylums would have been detained.

Why should it take a Judge to decide whether someone should remain detained indefinitely, why not allow prison governors and psychologists to decide that people should be detained because even though not neccessarily ill or to have committed a crime they are considered to have dangerous personality traits?

[fidothedog]

Brilliant, just linked to the site. Nothing more needs to be said.