Members of Critical Mass are being kettled by the police. Protest is not allowed during the London 2012 Olympics.
Policing
Then and now
Then:
A lawful Salvation Army march attracted disorderly opposition and was therefore the occasion of a breach of the peace.
Held: It could not be found a case of unlawful assembly against the leaders of the Salvation Army. Accepting that a person is liable for the natural consequences of what he does, the court nevertheless held that the natural consequences of the lawful activity of the Salvation Army did not include the unlawful activities of others, even if the accused knew that others would react unlawfully.
Now:
In what appeared to be pre-emptive strikes against anything considered to have the potential to be “trouble”, around 100 people were arrested in advance of the Royal Wedding held on 29th April 2011.
At para. 152 the judgment states – “…. we find nothing in the various strands of the claimants’ case, whether taken individually or cumulatively, to make good the contention that the policing of the Royal Wedding involved an unlawful policy or practice, with an impermissibly low threshold of tolerance for public protest.”
Also:
It was around then that the graffiti artists realised what point the police were trying to make with them. Having been arrested, they were questioned about what they considered petty matters – accusations of criminal damage in the ’90s, questions about websites and magazines that they were involved in. After being briefly questioned about these seemingly irrelevant matters, they were told that they were to be bailed until November on the condition that they did not use any form of railway in London (overground, tube or tram), carry spray paint (or other graffiti tools, presumably) at any time, or travel within a mile of any Olympic area. That includes the Olympic Park, the ExCel center and other Earls Court locations, Greenwich park, Hampton Court Palace, Hyde Park, Lord’s Cricket Ground, North Greenwich Arena, The Mall, The Royal Artillery Barracks, Wembley Arena, Wembley Stadium, Wimbledon and a host of out-of-London locations.
Enjoy the games.
Missing the forest for the trees
Zunguzungu links to a hard luck story in the Marie Claire about an “accidental sex offender”. A nineteen year old boy who had sex with his 15 year old girlfriend, whose mother shopped him to the cops to “teach him a lesson”, which landed him on the Texas sex offenders register where he still is, fifteen years later, even though he’s now married to the same women and they have children together. It’s a tragic illustration of how sex offender registration laws can ruin the lives of people who were never supposed to end up on them, but whom political considerations keep on these registers — no politician up for re-election wants to be accused of being soft on rapists or pedophiles…
It’s a good argument against such registers: sex offender registration is for life, regardless of the severity of your crime and you can never get off it, except in very special circumstances. In effect sexual offenders are considered so dangerous that they have to be punished for life with all kinds of restrictions even when clearly they are not, something most other criminals do not have to deal with: a murderer can be rehabilitiated, a rapist cannot. Which is why sexual offender registers are quite likely doing more harm than good and should be abolished. You would think that the people in this case, being victims of this policy themselves, would understand. You’d be wrong:
Today, Nikki, 30, and Frank, 34, both say they unequivocally support laws that put sexual predators behind bars and protect children from attacks. “The registry isn’t a bad thing,” says Nikki. “It’s a good thing. It’s just that Frank shouldn’t be on it.”
The bullet next time
Ajani Husbands sends a letter to his unborn, Black son:
You will not survive your encounter, so it is important to remember to show investigators, the courts, and critics alike that you were in fact the victim. This will be difficult as the assumption is ever-present that somehow, in some way, you did something wrong. That perhaps there was something different you could have, should have done. Perhaps you should have worn something different or walked in a less suspicious manner. I assure you, my son, this is not the case. Regardless of your actions, you were not meant to survive. All you can hope for is an easier postmortem investigation. This will be of some comfort to your mother and I as we cope through your loss, and so I ask you to follow these directions carefully.
See also how to talk to young Black boys about Trayvon Martin and Etan Thomas talking about how and what he will need to tell his six year old son soon.
Land of the Free
For most privileged, professional people, the experience of confinement is a mere brush, encountered after a kid’s arrest, say. For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision†in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.