Workers' Liberty

MURDER ON A LONDON STREET
Guiseppi's grey head lies where flowing blood
Gives it a glass-black glistening halo, bright
Against the flagstone in the London night;

On Stroppyblog, Janine discusses a report this week showing that immigrants commit no more crimes than n

An increase in, and a strengthening of, stop and search powers looks set to become a key part of the government’s “tough on crime” agenda.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has proposed that British courts should use Islamic sharia law for family matters among Muslim citizens.

The successful prosecution of the Metropolitan Police for negligence in the July 2005 shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes has dramatically highlighted the unaccountability of the police and the lack of democracy in the justice system.

Gun and violent crime has become a big issue, with several murders this year alone, many in London. The media and politicians don’t help us to understand this issue.

The new issue of Tubeworker looks at the rise in gun crime, criticising mainstream political non-solutions. It also calls for more action to save Tube ticket offices and resist LUL's plan to introduce agency staff, security guards and mobile supervision.

Other workplace stories include the closure of the East London line, the oppressive regime on the East Ham group, and moves by Northern line cleaners to get organised.

Click on the attached file to view, download and/or print it. Click here to read Tubeworker's blog.

What is the government going to do with the illegally striking prison officers? Send them all to jail?

Two wee anecdotes:

1. A couple of people I know who live in the Clapton Pond area have recently been the unfortunate victims of crime. One has had his car stolen for the second time in the last year. The other was forced to hand over his motorbike at knifepoint.

By Mike Rowley

State legal aid is a vital lifeline for many people who cannot afford to pay a lawyer, including people with problems with debt, police and this country’s endlessly persecutory immigration authorities. Naturally, therefore, New Labour has decided to “marketise” the legal aid system.

Robin Sivapalan examines the educational and social background to gangster and gun culture and starts a discussion on how institutional racism still poisons British society.

by Sacha Ismail

Toni Comer, the 19 year old woman whose beating by Sheffield police was captured on CCTV, says she remembers nothing about the night of the incident. But the cameras show her being hit, held down by four people, hit five more times and then pinned down with a foot on her body. Other officers arrived, with a police dog, and then she was dragged to their van with her trousers around her ankles.

A study commissioned by the BBC has revealed that more than a third of young people given ASBOs have what the report calls a 'brain disorder'. I might prefer to call it a neurological difference, but the point is the same - young people with conditions such as autism, ADHD and Asperger's syndrome are being punished by the criminal justice system instead of being helped with their social development.

When I was first active in feminist politics in the 80s and 90s, we did a lot of campaigning to change the Police's treatment of domestic violence victims. We complained about the Police's habit of dismissing violence as "just a domestic", of belittling the women who suffered it and indulging the men who meted it out. All this campaigning paid off - women won the right to be interviewed by specially-trained female officers, new judicial procedures enabled women to give evidence in a more sensitive way, and the Police changed their attitude and now take domestic violence more seriously.

Or do they? The horrific case of Wendy Billing suggests otherwise.

'Stop the warmongers' called a protest on Wednesday to provide a platform for all those who wished to show their anger at the policies of the New Labour government. About 60 people including a number with young children, turned up to hear speakers and release gas-filled balloons with labels with comments along the lines of 'I am angry with New Labour because…' close to the conference.

Just as I am getting back on my feet after my horrific injury last year, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority has bowled me over by turning down my claim.

They reckon that what happened to me was an accident rather than a crime. Obviously, the CICA thinks it knows better than both the police, who defined the incident as an assault and gave me a crime number, and Victim Support, who have been giving me support as a victim of crime.

By Mike Rowley

ONE of the most grotesque aspects of last month’s local election campaign was the media frenzy about “foreign criminals” being released from prison. If the gutter press is to be believed, the streets of Britain are teeming with rapists and murderers who have been let out of prison solely due to the extreme leniency of the government.

Last week, a report suggested that shoplifters should not be sent to prison.

Sounds sensible to me. I can't see that the general public needs 'protecting' from a serious and imminent threat from shoplifters, and prison is more effective at turning shoplifters into burglars or multi-functional criminals than into 'reformed characters'.

By Sofie Buckland

Home Secretary John Reid has wasted no time in capitulating to the pressures of the tabloid press.

When the Home Office recently (27 July) released its projections for the UK prison population, the Howard League for Penal Reform commented: “The prison population is currently at a record high of 78,500. This is 75% higher than 15 years ago when the population was 45,000. Last Friday there were 4,492 women in prison and 11,490 young men and boys aged under 21.”

Yesterday, the Report was published into the appalling death in Feltham Young Offenders' Institution of Zahid Mubarek. Zahid was murdered by his racist cellmate Robert Stewart, but as his family's spokesperson pointed out at yesterday's press conference, this was an institutional murder by a prison system which didn't seem to see the problem in putting a racist in a cell with an Asian teenager.

The government is in a panic. Its criminal justice policy is in chaos. At the same time a Chief Constable publicly denounces them for pandering in their decisions to the demagogue tabloid press. And he’s right.

The Blair government says it will take measures so that any foreigner - anyone who is not a British citizen - who is jailed will then be deported.

John McDonnell MP has put two amendments to Clause 8 of the new Armed Forces Bill. Campaigners are seeking other MPs' support for his amendments before the Bill comes to the Commons on Monday 22 May.

Amnesty International has recently published its “league table” of rates of execution in countries around the world.

80% of executions worldwide were carried out by just one country. There are no prizes for guessing which...

By Alan McArthur

Police lawyers have been strong-arming cinemas to stop them showing Injustice, a powerful new documentary on deaths in police custody which exposes corruption and cover-up at every level of the criminal justice system.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther and an award-winning journalist. Mumia has been on death row since 1982, after he was wrongfully sentenced for the shooting of a police officer.

By Sacha Ismail

Anyone who has reported a robbery to the police knows how ridiculous the claim that they exist to stop crime is.