On May 20th, 1987, Edward Earl Johnson, one of the overwhelmingly disproportionate number of African Americans awaiting execution on death row, was put to death in a gas chamber in Mississippi. He had been the subject of a BBC Documentary, Fourteen Days in May, which had intimately captured the final two weeks of his life, [...]
Filed under: andrewnoakes, crime, racism, uspolitics on November 20th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
The Independent on Sunday ran with this article leading, at least in the rural village where I obtained a copy. If you can’t be bothered to read it all (and I don’t blame you) it is an apology for a cannabis legalisation campaign that the Independent ran in the 1990s, which retracts the earlier position, [...]
Filed under: crime, davidcameron, health on March 19th, 2007 | 1 Comment »
The Glasgow Herald reports that parts of the prison system are going to be taken over by the Church of Scotland. This made me laugh, although it is on the face of it a perfectly reasonable suggestion, as church groups including the Church of Scotland already provide other social services such as schools and [...]
Filed under: crime, religion, scotland on March 7th, 2007 | 7 Comments »
Lord Turnbull, who addressed Clare Politics earlier this evening, spoke about the difficulties of co-ordinating policies and administration across departments and organisations. This brought to mind the policy announced by John Reid last month to split the Home Office into a security department and a Ministry of Justice. Unsurprisingly, Lord Turnbull thought this would be [...]
Filed under: crime, labour, ukpolitics on February 22nd, 2007 | 2 Comments »
While listening to Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast as I ate my breakfast this morning I heard about an interesting piece featuring in the New Yorker this week (and, much as I love reading the New Yorker because I think it makes me look intellectual, it was interesting for another reason entirely) and immediately went to [...]
Filed under: crime, culture, iraq, society, uspolitics on February 18th, 2007 | 2 Comments »
The influential Council of Circuit Judges is opposing proposed changes in the law to boost rape conviction rates. The Guardian led with this article on the front page, highlighting the abysmal 5% conviction rate from rape trials. The judges are objecting to three points, first of all a new definition of consent to sexual intercourse [...]
Filed under: crime, society, ukpolitics on January 23rd, 2007 | 5 Comments »
