‘Clare’s Law’ and ‘Make scrotes change their ways Pt 1’
A brief Wikipedia hx of the build-up to Clare’s Law.
‘Clare’s Law is named after Clare Wood, a 36 year old mother. Clare met her murderer and ex-boyfriend, 40 year old George Appleton, on Facebook. Appleton had a violent criminal history which Clare didn’t know about. They dated for several months before she ended their relationship in October 2008 over Appleton’s coercive behavior and infidelity. But Appleton continued his abusive behavior with escalating violence. In the months leading up to her murder, Wood filed several police reports against Appleton for behaviors including harassment, criminal damage, threats to kill, and sexual assault. Shortly before her death, Appleton had been arrested for breaking down Clare’s front door and attempting to rape her. On 2 February 2009, emergency services found her body in her residence, strangled and set on fire. Appleton’s body was found 6 days later hanging in an abandoned pub.
Appleton had seriously abused women in the past and the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) were aware of his violent history. Clare’s family stated that she would not have entered into a relationship with Appleton had she known of his violent past.’ (*f)
Make scrotes change – or else.
Consider that this Appleton wretch, even when in prison, is protected from suffering the consequences of who he is and what he chooses to do. Least restrictive policies and ECHR laws prevent violent scrotes from being locked up together away from those cons wanting peace. (*a) Same in mental hospital. Compulsory education, therapy and proper physical work (no it doesn’t HAVE to cost more) would be linked to release, parole etc. There would have to be some immediate rewards and goodies too, not just future rewards. Cons score poorly on the delayed gratification test.
*a) I was on a course once where the trainer was a former P.O. At one time, his prison had successfully separated the two classes of con. The troublemakers, dealers and violent were housed away from the others who were getting on with life peacefully. It worked a treat. (*b) The scrotes didn’t change one jot but they only harmed and disrupted themselves – and the screws who worked that landing or wing. I can’t remember what the guy said about how they handled that but I have an idea because I’ve worked the equivalent version in mental hospitals. You put all the most violent patients (diagnostically these are usually ASPDs, psychopaths and paranoid schizophrenics but diagnosis is not that relevant here, behaviour is) and you don’t let them do a thing. They get up and shower when the day shift comes on and tells them to. These are male wards. (Women patients are different, you can’t handle them like that, not even the dangerous ones). They sit in the day room all day, under tight observation by high numbers of male staff, big lads, quite keen to scrap and good at it. They must ask permission to stand up, to go to the toilet – one at a time – under escort. They are searched a lot. They don’t leave the ward to go to education and socials. It is as boring as hell. They want to go back to their base ward where they had activities, classes, workshops and more freedom.
On one of these wards a famous criminal was brought in to be assessed for a psychiatric defence (before his lawyers had even proposed it). There was a queue of patients wanting the kudos of killing him. They scarcely even saw him, let alone had a chance to touch him. That’s how tightly controlled these wards were, possibly still are and could be again. That’s how you prevent the worst violence – or most of it. Patients still attacked staff with mind-blowing speed and viciousness but it was quickly dealt with and they regretted it later.
*b) you can probably imagine what happened next. The governor forbade it, didn’t explain himself but I bet it was ECHR and the peaceful prisoners lost out to the predators. Gee thanks, Cherie.
Back to Appleton and Clare. They invented a new law – Clare’s Law – where a request to the local police force about a man’s previous offending has to be granted. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s not hard to work out.
1. Who has to do all the donkey work?
The potential victim’s despairing family (remember at this point the future victim is starry-eyed in love with the perp, imagining a bliss-filled future) and the local police force’s data team.
2. Who gets dropped in it when they fail to do the donkey work on top of their original jobs? The local police force managers drop whoever is lowest on the totem pole in the foo.
None of this hard work or responsibility lands on the scrote.
Now call me a miserable old judgemental git but wouldn’t a much better (*d) idea include
- Restraining or exclusion orders monitored by tagging (preferably not contracted to G4S)
- immediate licence revocation and return to prison as soon as they return to their old ways (ASPDs cannot learn from experience – fact – it’s one of the diagnostic criteria *b)
- a percentage of prison beds kept open for exactly this outcome so punishment (and public protection) happens swiftly
- compulsory education and therapy in prison
- and – sit down liberals, and pass the smelling salts – the return of the fully justified indeterminate sentences for cons who refuse to change. (*c)
*b) https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/pn.39.1.0025a
*c) See ‘Baselines’ post
*d) better in terms of these practical outcomes –
- compulsory behaviour change from the scrote,
- victims and MOPs feeling safe in their homes
- and the satisfaction every law abiding citizen feels when justice is done )
That means – (and secure mental hospitals already work like this – in practice, not by law, because a less secure hospital further down the chain has to agree to take the patient off your hands – you don’t get out, ever, until you have reduced your risk substantially, changed your ways, learned your lesson, repented/felt remorse, worked hard on yourself. It doesn’t mean you take a ‘course’ and tick a box. Or start a treatment programme and don’t finish it because it wasn’t the kind of programme you could pretend to engage in. (*e) I can remember patients who died in secure hospitals, after serving decades but remained too dangerous to consider discharging. At one place, they’d be trialled on a less strict ward (with lower staffing and fewer incidents, watching other patients moving through the system towards the gate) to see if they could handle it. One patient, a rapist, almost immediately started following the female cleaners and visitors around, looking to get them on their own. Even though he’d been caught many times before and ‘knew’ in his brain-damaged way, that staff were watching for that very behaviour. Couldn’t stop himself. Got returned to the blocks and as far as I know, never got out.
*) heaps of cons describe group therapy for noncing offences as ‘courses’, i.e. not therapy which is rather a giveaway as to how they really see it.
*e) NB there are data showing worse re-offending rates for cons who drop out of courses. The data don’t show the explanation but I suspect it because these courses weren’t easy to fake engagement with a get an easy pass. So the drop-outs were cons who enrolled but never intended to change.
NB These reforms wouldn’t have to be expensive. Some prison costs are inevitable and have to be borne by a functioning society for its continuing health. Those include safe staffing levels, improved recruitment, support and training, proper lifetime career structure for P.O.s so Britain can retain them and help them get better at their jobs every year. Security of prisons, maintenance, upgrades, research – we have been royally shafted by Maggie and Ronnie’s childlike acceptance of the economic illiterate Milton Friedman’s idea/pipedream/fiction that public services/everything can be done cheaper with no harmful consequences.
This post is experiencing a growth spurt so go to ‘Make scrotes change their ways’ Pt 2
*f) About this – ‘Following her death, Wood’s family stated that she would not have entered into a relationship with Appleton had she known of his violent past.’ Families will say unrealistic things like this about their idealised murdered child (no mother or father is going to admit their daughter’s gusset was tickled by having a dangerous boyfriend) especially when the reporter buttonholes them directly they’ve come out of court and they’re raw with hurt.
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