Joshua: quite so; I fear ithese questions will be left to secondary legislation as a
tiresome issues of detail, where decidedly they are NOT.
Eric raises significant questions which I yet to have strike me. Andrew Turek posits a hypothetical example which -no doubt- illuminates my abstract points. As to his last -excellent- point, firstly are Secs of State/Minosters/ officials EVEN likely to understand them or their import or from their lofty “don’t bother me with detail” heights so much as WISH to tackle them.
Or am I now straying from scepticism to the cynicism i so deplore?
So the perp lives in Leeds and the victim lives in Manchester.
Fine, so you exclude P from Manchester - and you tell V that if she (excuse the sexist stereotype) goes to Leeds there is a risk of encountering P. Indefinitely or for a fixed term?
P has a family funeral in Leeds. Can he get permission to go - from whom - and how quickly?
Or if P wants to apply for a job in Leeds?
If this is to last for their joint lives it becomes more preposterous yet. Years later after P has been living a law-abiding life V moves to a house near P and sees him in the street. Is someone - who? going to tell P to sell up and go? And how soon?
What happens when the conviction is spent?
And one last question: has anyone given these questions any serious consideration?
The UK is still a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, I believe. Brexit didn’t have the effect of it falling away. Andrew’s example and variations of it are not only realistic but surely contravene the obligations that the UK has signed up for under that Convention.
Presumably, such orders will be attached to early release conditions and seek to reduce the risk of an offender/victim encounter during the offender's post-prison transition. Depending on what the legislation looks like, judges might also be able to impose conditions on ex-prisoners who did not get early release. But in either case they couldn't be indefinite; more likely until the sentence is fully served or perhaps a couple of years beyond. The order, I imagine, would have the practical effect of ensuring the offence is not 'spent' in the meantime (i.e. the order itself, if not the offence, would have to be declared to potential employers, etc).
Lyn Boxall’s cautionary and at least rightly sceptical observations are so apposite.
The quasi-graveyard of such ostensibly sound -and, to be charitable, often well intentioned- projects is strewn with evidence aplenty of the failures,too often accompanied by criminal mendacity of the tagging- and -other mega-corporations outsourced to.AND nary a sign on later Parliamentary select committee scrutiny of due diligence by the MOJ or Home Office when the breathtaking defaults are plain to all save for -as they claim- the government unit and Secs of State/Ministers “in charge”.
Until SOMETHING by way for evidence should be forthcoming how can we have any confidence in any such measures would be carried out with “ tough monitoring supported by proven technology”. “Proven” by what and whose measure- or are we still circling back as usual to mere, unequivocal assurances and assertions by officials AND Ministers, as with - forgive me-Sarah Sackman KC, who in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary continues to maintain that the entities to whom interpreting and translating services are functioning very well? It would be laughable we’re it not so vitally important.
These issues desperately need to be raised insistently on the passage of the necessary primary legislation through Parliament.
We are to understand that Probation Officers are to conduct assessments, etcetera. WHAT Probation Officers? “Wrecking ball” Grayling capped ignominiously the general direction of travel with that service being downgraded just to a bean counting and technological reliant sub-profession. (As to the technology see above).
Diana Parkes and Hattie Barkworth Nanton -rightly-speak of the freedom for survivors “to live, move and heal”. They are of course resoundingly right to seek just that objective, which is scarcely to say that the government’s proposed measures are the bespoke design for that to be achieved. More to the point, however, the subtext as almost every seems to me to be that all such offenders are to be “written off” in terms of any rehabilitation or at best to be shunted off into a railway siding until time or -in the ineffable words so often employed, “until Parliamentary time allows.”
Also are the proposed exclusion zones to be “written off” as some species of ghetto? I can imagine the replies sought to pre-contract enquiries on a domestic house purchase:” Yes: the house is within such an exclusion zone ; however…….”
These must be extremely irritating issues that I am raising here, especially for those in government or OUTSOURCING circles but then is it not the job of lawyers (retired or otherwise) to be a nuisance and to challenge, as well as to propose? I can add that with others I have done my best over decades to be constructive also these several decades.
Good points. Carry on being irritating Malcolm! I haven't yet got to the stage of being able to afford to retire yet but if I ever do, I shall join the band of retired irritators!
Excuse my cynicism, but “tough monitoring supported by proven technology” comes straight from the vendor's marketing materials in my experience. I hope the Department of Justice is going to do its own due diligence on the so-called solution.
Oh, and that what they are proposing is in line with the Data Protection Act in the UK.
I saw a piece a couple of months ago about the UK government having decided to adopt some mapping of peat bogs or something similar. The mapping was wildly and obviously full of mistakes, but it was AI so it was accepted without question. This new initiative re ring-fencing offenders reminded me about the peat bogs thing.
'The Moorland Association, who pushed hard for this map, calls the report “The Great Peat Map Debacle.” The bare floor of a quarry was marked on the map as a 1 metre depth of peat. Bare limestone and nearby woodland were both identified as calluna bogs.'
'Natural England’s own announcement blog post got a pile of comments detailing things the map got wrong in the commenters’ own local areas:
“All our ‘degraded peat’ are trees and rocks in real life.”
“Fields claimed to be peat of over 1m depth when they are a stagnogley mineral soil.”
“Haytor, the iconic Devon landmark known for being a very large and imposing lump of granite, is shown as being deep peat … It looks like all the tors of Dartmoor are similarly misdiagnosed.”.
Joshua: quite so; I fear ithese questions will be left to secondary legislation as a
tiresome issues of detail, where decidedly they are NOT.
Eric raises significant questions which I yet to have strike me. Andrew Turek posits a hypothetical example which -no doubt- illuminates my abstract points. As to his last -excellent- point, firstly are Secs of State/Minosters/ officials EVEN likely to understand them or their import or from their lofty “don’t bother me with detail” heights so much as WISH to tackle them.
Or am I now straying from scepticism to the cynicism i so deplore?
So the perp lives in Leeds and the victim lives in Manchester.
Fine, so you exclude P from Manchester - and you tell V that if she (excuse the sexist stereotype) goes to Leeds there is a risk of encountering P. Indefinitely or for a fixed term?
P has a family funeral in Leeds. Can he get permission to go - from whom - and how quickly?
Or if P wants to apply for a job in Leeds?
If this is to last for their joint lives it becomes more preposterous yet. Years later after P has been living a law-abiding life V moves to a house near P and sees him in the street. Is someone - who? going to tell P to sell up and go? And how soon?
What happens when the conviction is spent?
And one last question: has anyone given these questions any serious consideration?
The UK is still a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, I believe. Brexit didn’t have the effect of it falling away. Andrew’s example and variations of it are not only realistic but surely contravene the obligations that the UK has signed up for under that Convention.
Presumably, such orders will be attached to early release conditions and seek to reduce the risk of an offender/victim encounter during the offender's post-prison transition. Depending on what the legislation looks like, judges might also be able to impose conditions on ex-prisoners who did not get early release. But in either case they couldn't be indefinite; more likely until the sentence is fully served or perhaps a couple of years beyond. The order, I imagine, would have the practical effect of ensuring the offence is not 'spent' in the meantime (i.e. the order itself, if not the offence, would have to be declared to potential employers, etc).
All good questions. I hope the answers are clear from the bill rather than left to secondary legislation.
And a few more.
V lives in London and P is excluded from our august capital.
He serves his time in the Scrubs.
Who is going to be responsible for seeing that he is discharged it is to somewhere outside London?
And will HM Prison Service move him to a prison outside London just before he is released?
And if (after release) he has to go to hospital and has to be moved?
The whole plan is impractical populist nonsense.
Lyn Boxall’s cautionary and at least rightly sceptical observations are so apposite.
The quasi-graveyard of such ostensibly sound -and, to be charitable, often well intentioned- projects is strewn with evidence aplenty of the failures,too often accompanied by criminal mendacity of the tagging- and -other mega-corporations outsourced to.AND nary a sign on later Parliamentary select committee scrutiny of due diligence by the MOJ or Home Office when the breathtaking defaults are plain to all save for -as they claim- the government unit and Secs of State/Ministers “in charge”.
Until SOMETHING by way for evidence should be forthcoming how can we have any confidence in any such measures would be carried out with “ tough monitoring supported by proven technology”. “Proven” by what and whose measure- or are we still circling back as usual to mere, unequivocal assurances and assertions by officials AND Ministers, as with - forgive me-Sarah Sackman KC, who in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary continues to maintain that the entities to whom interpreting and translating services are functioning very well? It would be laughable we’re it not so vitally important.
These issues desperately need to be raised insistently on the passage of the necessary primary legislation through Parliament.
We are to understand that Probation Officers are to conduct assessments, etcetera. WHAT Probation Officers? “Wrecking ball” Grayling capped ignominiously the general direction of travel with that service being downgraded just to a bean counting and technological reliant sub-profession. (As to the technology see above).
Diana Parkes and Hattie Barkworth Nanton -rightly-speak of the freedom for survivors “to live, move and heal”. They are of course resoundingly right to seek just that objective, which is scarcely to say that the government’s proposed measures are the bespoke design for that to be achieved. More to the point, however, the subtext as almost every seems to me to be that all such offenders are to be “written off” in terms of any rehabilitation or at best to be shunted off into a railway siding until time or -in the ineffable words so often employed, “until Parliamentary time allows.”
Also are the proposed exclusion zones to be “written off” as some species of ghetto? I can imagine the replies sought to pre-contract enquiries on a domestic house purchase:” Yes: the house is within such an exclusion zone ; however…….”
These must be extremely irritating issues that I am raising here, especially for those in government or OUTSOURCING circles but then is it not the job of lawyers (retired or otherwise) to be a nuisance and to challenge, as well as to propose? I can add that with others I have done my best over decades to be constructive also these several decades.
Good points. Carry on being irritating Malcolm! I haven't yet got to the stage of being able to afford to retire yet but if I ever do, I shall join the band of retired irritators!
Excuse my cynicism, but “tough monitoring supported by proven technology” comes straight from the vendor's marketing materials in my experience. I hope the Department of Justice is going to do its own due diligence on the so-called solution.
Oh, and that what they are proposing is in line with the Data Protection Act in the UK.
Cynicism is always welcome here.
I saw a piece a couple of months ago about the UK government having decided to adopt some mapping of peat bogs or something similar. The mapping was wildly and obviously full of mistakes, but it was AI so it was accepted without question. This new initiative re ring-fencing offenders reminded me about the peat bogs thing.
Ah, yes, here's a piece on the peat bogs: https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/05/19/defra-and-natural-england-creates-unusable-peat-map-with-ai/.
'The Moorland Association, who pushed hard for this map, calls the report “The Great Peat Map Debacle.” The bare floor of a quarry was marked on the map as a 1 metre depth of peat. Bare limestone and nearby woodland were both identified as calluna bogs.'
'Natural England’s own announcement blog post got a pile of comments detailing things the map got wrong in the commenters’ own local areas:
“All our ‘degraded peat’ are trees and rocks in real life.”
“Fields claimed to be peat of over 1m depth when they are a stagnogley mineral soil.”
“Haytor, the iconic Devon landmark known for being a very large and imposing lump of granite, is shown as being deep peat … It looks like all the tors of Dartmoor are similarly misdiagnosed.”.