David Davis' Resignation and fight over civil liberty

[Peter Fairbrother]

Roland Perry wrote:
> In article <48521DAE.9020707@callnetuk.com>, PeteM <otcbn@callnetuk.com> 
> writes
>> the police's alleged need to decrypt documents found on a suspect's 
>> computer is regularly trotted out to justify any proposal for extended 
>> detention.
> 
> It seems to me that this is solving the wrong problem. What we need is a 
> regime that allows people to be held upon "minor" charges while the 
> major charges continue to be investigated with evidence and statements 
> collected from the alleged perpetrators. What I struggle to understand 
> is why there needs to be a hard deadline to "put up or shut up". As long 
> as there's *some* belief (backed by sufficient evidence to persuade a 
> court) that one lot of mischief is proven sufficiently to detain them, 
> but there's still more to look into.

You have never spent a night in the cells, I see.

While it does sometimes happen that someone is charged with another 
offense after the initial charge it is rare(ish), and usually the second 
charge refers to some other alleged crime.

If the Police are investigating one alleged offense - and it is still 
only an alleged offense, the presumption of innocence is the only thing 
which keeps us from tyranny, without it anyone can be punished at the 
whim of those in power; this has happened in European countries in our 
lifetimes, and is still happening elsewhere - then the Police/DPP do not 
usually (though they sometimes do, as an "adjustment" to the charge(s), 
but the better Courts don't like it much) make more charges related to 
that offense.


In general, being held in custody before being charged is very much more 
stressful than being held in custody after being charged - at least you 
then know why you are in custody, and what you will be taken to Court for.

The other thing is that you are not in the custody of the Police after 
being charged and taken to Court in the first instance, but in the 
custody of the Prison service, who usually don't much care what you have 
been accused of and charged with doing.

You aren't being pressurised to confess any more.

Being held in custody and being held for interrogation are not at all 
the same thing.


-- Peter Fairbrother