The Lucy Letby Law

Lucy Letby has been found guilty of killing seven children and at her sentencing today she might, understandably, receive a full life order (she did). It has been suggested that she has stated that she won't come to court for the sentencing (she did, but opted to stay in a holding cell in the court) and, as often happens when the country's pecker is up, there have been demands for a new law to force convicted people to attend court.

When convicted people attend court they get to listen to the judge's decision and often the judge's view of them as a person. They also, in some cases, get to hear impact statements from victims' families.

I wonder why that is considered important and who it is important for.

If it was important in that it aided some kind of change in the convicted person then that would make sense, i.e., it made them more reflective, repentant, less likely to offend again, to be less disruptive in prison. Awesome. I am sure that someone could do a study on that right now, comparing those who did and didn't turn up, those who turned up and got the sentence + opinion vs those who just got a sentence. No one has. So, we don't know if there is any point for the convicted person which means that we don't know if it improves public safety.

Is it good for the judge? Who knows. "Good for" might be hard to conceptualise, as it covers a lot of ground - is it good for them if they are, as a profession, massively narcissistic and love to hear their own grandiose pronouncements (just for clarity, I am not suggesting that judge's pronouncements are grandiose or that as a profession they are narcissists), and if it is, is that something we want to ensure can happen? If it is good for their career prospects to be seen to be telling people that they are bad (they've been convicted, we know that they are bad) or evil? We could check that too, do judges who make highly emotive statements climb the greasy pole? Could it be that it helps the public have a sense of belief in the judicial system? We could test that to. The Sentencing Advisory Council state that it is to explain the reasons for the sentence to those involved in the case. Honestly, this is probably only really necessary if the sentence seems lenient, not if it is a whole life tariff. If you are interested in hearing sentences you can find them here; 

Is it good for the families to look the convicted person in the eye and tell them how their lives have been impacted? Before doing so, most families think that it will, but we seldom find out, longer-term, if it does. But that could be tested. Research has shown that in the US although families want the death-penalty to be used, when it is they don't get a sense of "closure". So what we think we want isn't always what we need. As Magnum sang, someone of us take what we want, some of take what we need, some of us break, some of us bleed.

As suggested in a previous post related to changing laws re. marriage it does seem that we could investigate the value of forcing people to come to court to be sentenced, but we don't. 

The question I am raising is, given that no one cares much to discover the value, is it because this is simply about revenge? You might have a view about revenge, which is fine, as a general principle my view is that it's not a great motivation for much. Why might it be about revenge? Knowing that Lucy Letby might not come to court the former Justice Secretary, Robert Buckland apparently said on Radio 4, as reported in The Guardian, "called for proceedings to be broadcast into Letby’s cell, regardless of her wishes, saying she should have to listen to the victim impact statements... 'The government is probably going to have to look at ways they can increase the consequences upon defendants for not attending. In other words, to either create and extend the principle of contempt of court by statute to cover this refusal – a separate procedure that would attract a further sentence of imprisonment. Or to facilitate better ways in which defendants have nowhere to hide when it comes to listening to – or being made to listen to – court proceedings, even if they’re in the cell.' ".

He wants to find a way to force someone to listen if they can't be forced to come to court (apparently they can be taken to court, but no one likes the fight). If we can't show there is any positive reason for it does it feel as if this is to be another form of punishment? For an offender with any real sense of the world they will know that they have caused pain, they will know that they are hated, they will know that they are despised, so does it serve any purpose, other than revenge, to have it stated to them? For the offender who doesn't have this capacity, is telling them that they are evil and loathed likely to have any impact?

The current Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk, X'ed;

She might be a coward, and the fact that she chose not to turn up tells us something, perhaps, about her. If she is forced to turn up then we know nothing, was she forced by law or did she attend willingly? What makes it the final insult? Maybe I am wary of politicians writing things like this as I suspect there is politics involved, Mr Chalk doubtless wants to remain an MP and as Justice Secretary, but those are wrong reasons to come up with policy, surely?

Should policy be evidence-based? If not, it's just capricious and open to the winds of change and, on a wider point, we then don't get anywhere.

One final point, we have recently had a case where a man was imprisoned for 17 years for a rape that he didn't commit. He very likely had to listen to the judge's statements, impact statements -  would this increase the trauma for an innocent person? I am not suggesting that Ms Letby is innocent, I don't know, I haven't seen the evidence, but for one moment imagine, what if she didn't do it...it's bad enough to be told you have 14 whole life sentences, do we need this icing on the cake?