Of kneejerks and extremes...

"Oh, so now she appreciates the NHS? Right. Got it. Now she wants to give birth in an NHS hospital after two babies died of disease and malnutrition under IS! Is that what it takes to realise how good we have it with the NHS? I mean, really..."

That tirade was pretty much my initial reaction to Shamima Begum wanting to come back to the UK to give birth and then live quietly with her baby, when the news broke. But after my outburst, I took on a more measured view - just as extreme examples make for bad law, kneejerk reactions are not usually the best ones for informing policy or making decisions in complex situations.

Let me be clear - I do not recognise her messed-up attempt at feminism. To be casual about the sight of severed heads in bins because they may have once been attached to the bodies of people who may have attacked Muslim women, while she herself was part of a murderous cult in which girls and women in forced marriages are expected to breed more murderous cultists who will, in turn, rape and murder girls and women is nauseating. The two young women in the photograph above*, Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar, are the women who should be dominating the news - they are Iraqi Yazidis who escaped the sexual violence of IS and are now activists who speak out for the victims of the death cult - they are true feminists.

When Begum first appeared on our TV screens and in The Times, thanks to the heroic journalism of Anthony Loyd, we saw her at her most unfiltered. This is not a young woman who has been media-trained to within an inch of her life, this is a woman who is ignorant of how her vile words were playing out with the British public, and, crucially, this is a woman who has not really evolved from the absurd 15-year-old who left for Syria with two equally absurd schoolfriends in March 2015. There was plenty of East End bravado in her defiant tone where remorse should have been.

But I respectfully disagree with those who simply say she should never be allowed back in the UK and that Sajid Javid did the right thing by removing her citizenship. I understand that viewpoint but I do not share it.

Firstly, Javid has rendered Begum stateless - she is only "eligible" for Bangladeshi citizenship. She is not a Bangladeshi citizen. The Bangladeshi government has, quite rightly, asserted that she is not a citizen of their country. Begum was born and raised here. She is not Bangladesh's problem.  

"Eligibility" for citizenship is not the same as being a citizen. I am a permanent resident of the UK but I am not a British citizen. I am an Australian citizen. I am eligible for British citizenship but I have not gone through the process of becoming a British citizen. If I went to Australia tomorrow and committed a terrible crime there, everyone would expect me to be tried under the Australian system. There would be an outcry if the Australian government simply said: "She's eligible for British citizenship, put her on QF1 to Heathrow and they can deal with her." 

Javid should be made to publish his legal advice on the Begum case.

It sets a terrible precedent for revoking citizenship. Imagine, for example, if Britain had a government with a leader who was openly anti-Israel, who viewed Israel as a terrorist state. And then imagine if this future leader of the country used Britain's anti-terrorism laws to convict someone of inciting terror because, say, they donated to or publicly supported the IDF. If the convicted person happened to be Jewish, using the same rationale that Javid has applied in the past week to Begum, this hypothetical PM and Home Secretary might strip that person of British citizenship and declare that because every Jewish person is eligible for Israeli citizenship, they could be deported to Israel, even if they had never been there. 

It's a chilling precedent. 

If Begum returns to the UK, nobody reasonable would advocate that she simply be allowed to go back to Bethnal Green with her son and the rest of her family. She should be apprehended on arrival. It is not unreasonable for her innocent son to be fostered with a view to being adopted, or for her to have to meet those who lost loved ones in the Manchester attacks so they can describe the impact of that unjustifiable act of terror on their lives and communities. She should face the might of British justice to determine if she is guilty of terror offences committed in this country and punished accordingly. There is almost no doubt that a guilty verdict would involve a custodial sentence. She cannot be led to expect that life will return to exactly how it used to be. Her life will be one of permanent restrictions and surveillance.

Equally, due process must be applied. If due process is thrown out the window, we become no better than any of the states around the world that play fast and loose with this essential component of any civilised legal system. I say that as someone who was tried for adultery without due process in the United Arab Emirates - I was never properly informed that I had been charged, my passport was confiscated without explanation, I signed a document in Arabic without a translation, I was never given the option of legal representation, I was tried via an interpreter in the office of a judge, I was very lucky to be found not guilty and not risk a maximum of six years in prison.

Britain should be better than that. Due process is for everyone, not just people we like.

The other sticking point is that if Begum is not brought home to face justice, she and her son are prime targets for people smugglers. It does not take a massive leap of imagination to realise that she could find her way back to the UK or Europe via people smugglers, if the price was right and there were enough morally bankrupt people willing to fund such a venture. The upshot of that scenario is that, as well as enabling one of the most disgusting trades in the world, Begum could end up back in Europe or the UK and the authorities would have no idea. No reasonable person should view that as an acceptable possibility.

It is a mess that started in Britain and Britain can and should be the one to deal with it. It's facile to say "It's not my problem, I didn't contribute to her radicalisation!". I don't think I personally led Begum to run off and marry a jihadi either, but investigations need to take place in Britain, in her community, at the mosque she frequented before she left, among her friends and family, in the online communications she received as a girl who was almost certainly targeted as being susceptible to radicalisation. Now she is an adult, she needs to own her shit - and Britain needs to understand how this shit happens over here in the first place and stop it.

___________________________

* Here are some links to articles about Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/06/nadia-murad-isis-sex-slave-nobel-peace-prize

https://multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/en/nadia-murad-and-lamiya-aji-bashar-sakharov-prize-laureates-2016_1501_pk

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-sex-slaves-lamiya-aji-bashar-nadia-murad-sinjar-yazidi-genocide-sexual-violence-rape-sakharov-a7445151.html

Photo credit: European Union. Iraqi Yazidi activists Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar receive 2016 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Who needs standards in journalism?

In this era of "citizen journalism", insisting on high standards in reporting - demanding pesky things such as accuracy, genuine balance, correct spelling, punctuation and grammar and, God forbid, paying journalists for their work - exposes one to mockery. 

Never mind that accuracy is the foundation on which credible journalism is built, or that balance on issues of climate change will not be achieved by wheeling out Lord Lawson to punch science in the face, or that journalism is more readable when spelling, punctuation and grammar are in order, or that journalists should be paid for their work because, well, it's work...

Instead, as part of the world's inexorable descent into idiocracy, the rise of the "citizen journalist" means that anyone, it seems, can call themselves a journalist. We wouldn't allow "citizen brain surgeons" to open our skulls but, it seems, many of us are happy to let "citizen journalists" tell us what to think, whether its accurate or not.

"Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?" I hear the indignant crowd shriek at me. After all, I've made a pretty good living out of being a journalist for more than 20 years now. Why would I want these untrained upstarts parking their tanks on my lawn? Why don't I just go back to my manual typewriter and report on the intrigues of the church fete and let "citizen journalists" take over?  

OK, I'll tell you why. Because journalism is a profession. Training is required. Journalists do not need to spend years and years at university, as is the case for doctors, and it is a shame that the days of cadetships, where aspiring hacks could leave school at 16 and work their way up the ladder at newspapers, have fallen by the wayside. But there are skills that need to be taught, an understanding of media law is essential, and ethics are as important as ever. These can be taught at college, university or on the job - or a combination of these - and they are essential for professionalism. 

This is not about Old Lady Lewis yelling at technology. It's great that social media can be used to break news, for people who are on the spot as news events unfold to film or write about what they see through platforms such as Twitter and Facebook Live. 

Hell, I'd be a massive hypocrite if I demanded that bloggers get shut down, particularly as bloggers have shown incredible bravery in less liberal parts of the world in their quest to expose true horrors and corruption. Raif Badawi, for example, is still languishing in a Saudi Arabian jail. He has been publicly lashed over charges, including insulting Islam and apostasy, because of his pro-free speech blog.

But plenty of bloggers and assorted social media users seem to be unaware of the responsibilities that come with writing either reportage or opinion pieces. They risk getting sued for libel or prejudicing court cases. Often, they contribute to the growing mountain of bullshit that can be filed under "fake news". 

The tidal wave of ignorance about the British criminal justice system and rules in regard to reporting on court cases has been brought into sharp focus in recent weeks. First, there was the #FreeTommy crowd, foaming and indignant that Stephen Yaxley-Lennon could be guilty of contempt of court when they thought all he was doing was telling the truth about rapists - except that his "reporting" has the potential to cost the taxpayers thousands in aborted trials and could cause rapists to go free. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is not a journalist.

And ever since the trial of cricketer Ben Stokes commenced earlier this month, the armchair experts have been out in force crapping all over social media with their inane pronouncements of guilt or innocence. These fools do not care that the trial is ongoing and, at the time of writing, not all evidence has come before the jury. 

As well as being told to avoid the traditional forms of news media, jurors are now being advised to steer clear of social media, lest their decision is coloured by online pitchfork-wavers. The journalists reporting on the case have to be very careful with the language they use, to not allow opinion to creep into their stories, but head over to Facebook and everyone seems to know exactly what happened that night and what should happen to those involved. It's pathetic.

Of course, not all journalism is perfect and bad journalism should be called out. This week, for example, there was a mass outrage because apparently an innocent British woman was jailed in Dubai for the heinous crime of having a glass of wine on an Emirates Airline flight. Except that's not quite what happened - and the reporting of this case in the UK media was almost universally terrible.  

The woman in question, Ellie Holman, a Swedish citizen who lives in Kent, arrived in Dubai from London with her daughter. At passport control, she handed over an expired Swedish passport. Understandably, she was not allowed into the country, as would be the case if she tried to enter any country with an expired passport. Ms Holman then produced an Iranian passport - Iranian citizens cannot get a tourist visa on arrival to the UAE, just as they can't if they want to visit the UK. She had the option of paying on the spot for a visa which would allow her, as an Iranian citizen, to spend 96 hours in the UAE. But she refused. 

As the situation escalated, she filmed the border control officials - again, this would land you in trouble at pretty much any international airport. In the UK, for example, while filming in public places is legal, airports are privately owned businesses and, as such, they can set their own rules in regard to filming and photography. 

Ms Holman was asked if she had been drinking and she said she'd consumed a glass of wine on the plane. But her detention was not for drinking a glass of wine - it was for visa irregularities. However, it was decided that charges would not be pursued and Ms Holman and her daughter should be arriving back in the UK today. 

If someone rocked up to Heathrow on an expired Swedish passport and then tried to enter the country by producing an Iranian passport without a valid UK visa - and then filmed border control officials as the situation escalated - they too would be taken aside and public sympathy would be non-existent. 

As someone who has herself fallen foul of the law in the UAE, I am not going to sit here and tell you all that UAE law is perfect. It's not and there are plenty of good reasons to criticise it. But I am also someone who believes in accurate journalism and there is nothing to be gained by reporting on Ms Holman's case in such a shoddy manner. It undermines the good work other journalists have done on reporting on legal matters in the UAE and neighbouring states.

If people who declare themselves "citizen journalists" would like to become professional journalists, there are multiple options available for training. It would be great if such people did take the time to make themselves aware of media law, of rules and conventions particularly in regard to court reporting, and of media ethics. Good things have come out of the rise of blogging and social media - but when you publish something, you have responsibilities. I'm sure plenty of people, if they have made it to the end of this blog post, will still dismiss me as a boring and bitter old hack, trying to take all the fun out of their crusades - but if you cannot be bothered with accuracy, you are not a journalist. 

Photography by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Lock 'em up! Throw away the key! Hang the lot of 'em!

This month, another depressingly vile story about Jon Venables, one of the killers of James Bulger, broke, along with news that the equally vile Michael Adebowale, one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, will be moved from a high-security prison to the apparently "luxurious" Broadmoor. Then, a few weeks ago, there was a minor outcry because Tristen Asllani, an Albanian man locked up in the UK on a 25-year sentence for drugs and weapons offences, boasted online about how much fun he was having in the amusement parlour that is Wandsworth prison. 

Yet it is absolutely worth having an intelligent conversation about prison reform because the current system is not working and passing blanket laws on the basis of extreme examples is never a good idea.

When I studied legal studies for my Higher School Certificate, the equivalent in my Australian home state of New South Wales to the A-Levels, we were taught that criminal punishment has four aims: retribution, protection of society, deterrence and rehabilitation. With prisons overcrowded to the point of being dangerous for staff and inmates, the only aim that is even close to being met is retribution, a satisfaction of our base need to punish the bastards, even if the punishment is ultimately ineffective or expensive or both.

Sure, society is protected from genuinely dangerous people, such as Venables, Adebowale and Asllani by locking them up - but what about the prisoners who have served their time and come out of the prison system learning little more than how to be a better criminal? How is that outcome improving either the life of the ex-prisoner or society as a whole?

And prison is clearly not working as a deterrent - in August 2017, prisoner numbers stood at 86,413, an increase of 1,200 since May 2017. In the past 30 years, the prison population has risen by 82%. The most recent recidivism stats released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in January 2018 come from the first quarter of 2016 - these showed the overall reoffending rate was at 29.6%, a figure that tends to fluctuate between 29% and 32%. In adult prisoners, the rate is 28.7% and in juvenile offenders 42.3%. None of this is good news.

One of the big reasons for overcrowded prisons is the over-reliance on custodial sentences for non-violent offences - MoJ figures reveal that 71% of prisoners in the UK are locked up for non-violent offences, and the use of the more effective community sentences has almost halved since 2006. Short prison sentences, instead of community sentences, are especially useless as a deterrent - according to the MoJ, almost 8,000 people serving a sentence of less than 12 months were recalled back to custody in the year to December 2016.

Whenever I think of the sheer futility and awfulness of custodial sentences for non-violent crimes, I am reminded of the dreadful case in Australia of Jamie Partlic. In 1987, the 19-year-old went to the notorious Long Bay jail, a prison that is home to some of New South Wales' most horrific and violent criminals. Partlic's crime was unpaid parking fines. After just four days in prison, he was beaten up so badly, he spent the next six months in a coma, sustaining permanent brain damage.

Perhaps we need to look to the example of the Netherlands where 19 prisons closed in 2013 because there weren't enough inmates to fill them. Instead of rushing to lock people up, particularly non-violent offenders, the Netherlands takes a far more level-headed approach. The ankle-monitoring system is heavily used to reduce reoffending rates with a 2008 study finding this cut recidivism by up to half compared to custodial sentences. It means that convicted criminals are still able to go to work and be productive members of society while still being monitored by the justice system.

Of course, whenever anyone dares raise their head over the parapet to call for improved, more humane prison conditions, there is the inevitable, moronic cry from the peanut gallery that "prison isn't meant to be a holiday camp". Everyone could debate for all time about the merits of allowing prisoners access to such things as TV sets in cells, internet access and recreational facilities, whether these should be for all inmates or whether they are only appropriate as a privilege for good behaviour, or whether they should only be for non-violent offenders in minimum security institutions, or not at all.

But to get bogged down in a mindless shouting match because someone read a fact-lite article  implying that all prisoners lead the life of Riley is to miss the point badly.

Nobody is seriously arguing that a stint in jail should be the equivalent of a holiday at an all-inclusive resort but nobody should seriously argue that it's perfectly fine for jails to be dirty, overcrowded shitholes with bad food. An unhygienic prison full of undernourished, often angry men (for it is men who are way more likely to be incarcerated than women) at risk of constantly getting physically and mentally ill, living cheek-by-jowl in conditions that are conducive to lost tempers bubbling over into full-blown riots, has no place in any country that purports to be civilised.

Oscar Wilde's account of prison life, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, should not be treated as a manifesto.

The deprivation of freedom is a major reason why prison is not a barrel of laughs, but this deprivation of freedom should not take place in an unhealthy environment where diseases spread easily. The risk of violence should be minimised wherever possible. Even if you genuinely don't give a damn about the wellbeing of any of the prisoners, think for a moment about the men and women who work in our prisons. They are as entitled to a safe working environment as anyone else.

And this brings me to rehabilitation - overcrowded prisons full of people susceptible to illness and on constant alert in case violence breaks out are useless for rehabilitation. The desire for retribution, for waving of metaphorical pitchforks, as if we are still living in an era of public executions, seems to far outweigh the importance of rehabilitation in conversations on prison conditions.

But to talk of the value of rehabilitation is not to be a soft touch or a liberal snowflake. It is to talk about ensuring that for the majority of prisoners, their time in prison is not a waste of life, a punitive means of passing time until the sentence is over and they are unleashed on the community again. Prisons should absolutely be used to equip inmates with skills for employability. Illiterate prisoners should absolutely have the opportunity to learn to read and write. Mental health issues should be as much of a priority for prison medical facilities as the patching up of shank wounds.

Rehabilitation - and a reduced reliance on jail sentences - is about getting serious about reducing reoffending rates, about ensuring that those who have served their time can be productive members of society when they are come out of prison, about making society better for everyone.

Yes, there will always be a minority of horrific criminals, such as Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, Fred and Rose West, Jon Venables and Michael Adebowale, where rehabilitation seems unlikely. But that does not mean that as a society we should simply give up all hope when it comes to the people who have ended up as convicted criminals for all manner of reasons. A focus on rehabilitation and not on simply locking people away at an ever-increasing rate have been shown to reduce crime rates and recidivism. If you have ever whined about your taxes being spent on prisons, if you have any desire for a safer society, you should support this.




Photography by George Hodan