Community Involvement in the Criminal Justice System
Tar and feathers for Belfast ‘drug dealer’
The victim was tied to a lamppost as masked men poured tar over him then covered him in feathers as women and children looked on.
A placard around his neck declared: "I'm a drug dealing scumbag."
The Attorney General Lord Goldsmith QC said of the day:
This was an inspiring day. .... We are going to make community involvement and problem solving a reality here ... I am challenging prosecutors to think creatively about their role at the heart of community justice, from start to finish. What has been discussed here will blaze a trail across the country.
While old fatty Goldsmith might not have been talking of this particular day, with the Government retreating from the essential idea that the State acts as a fair judge of punishment with its calls for victims or the nebulous community to be "involved" this is what you will get. I note from the Sun that the victim didn't go to the police or hospital, so a fully privatised justice system then...
Comments
Not to worry.
This is precisely the sort of anti-social behaviour the Police are targeting.
It couldn't happen in Croxteth... could it?
Ex-Pat Alfie
Posted by: Alfie | August 29, 2007 2:58 PM
Reading the Times article, it seems as though the scumbag wasn't a drug dealer at all -- or did the Times just choose to politicize the whole thing, and get it all wrong in so doing?
Posted by: Kim du Toit | August 29, 2007 5:05 PM
"The victim was tied to a lamppost..."
I think the word they're looking for here is "miscreant".
But then, I'm not a journalist.
Posted by: Billll | August 30, 2007 4:32 AM