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The Coalition continues with 28 day detention

Theresamay We had our first bad news under the Coalition a little while ago. Now, we've had some more.

Theresa May has announced that the rules which allow the police to detain suspects for 28 days without charge are to remain in force for at least another six months. Both parties in the Coalition have indicated that they think that the limit, which is the longest in the developed world, is too high. But still it's going to continue.

Extending detention without charge went against the grain of our country’s traditions of fairness under the law. I am afraid that continuing the policy suggests that the government’s promise to safeguard rights and liberties is hollow.

I mean – wasn't this government supposed to be different from the last lot? And isn't the civil liberties agenda supposed to be the rallying cry of the Coalition, as it's one of the things on which the constituent parts agree?

The record of prosecutions shows that this power has done nothing to advance the fight against terrorism. All it does is damage the very values of democratic freedom that terrorists hate.

After all, Dominic Raab MP's excellent book The Assault on Liberty makes it clear that there have been but five people detained up to the 28 day mark since this draconian power was introduced. Three were released without charge (which means that each of those cases was obviously a disgrace). The last two were charged, but the Metropolitan Police reported that the information needed to charge them emerged at the four and twelve day mark respectively. So even on the authoritarians' terms, they can at least reduce the term in question substantially based on the evidence, even without recourse to the principled argument they don't seem to want to have.

By Alex
Deane

Related post: discussion on this point over at Con Home

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Alex Deane Posted in Home
  • Jenny H

    On parr with all politics in Uk now – no one wants it or agrees with it …but it is still going ahead anyway. We really are a pathetic nation at the moment, just accepting the muck being imposed on us, while watching football, or Lady Scada (sh*t in Greek) while we are being literally destroyed by the sick, sick elitist bullies.
    …Unless of course, enough of us are feeling what I feel each day, and then suddenly there will be such an ‘explosion’ of fury that SOMETHING will change.

  • Purlieu

    Surely, when for example there’s a rape case and men in the area are asked to “come forward” to eliminate themselves from the enquiry, surely those DNA samples should be destroyed when the enquiry concludes. Yes ?