Stupidity Is Not A Crime!
The dangerous Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which has received surprisingly little media attention compared to equally dangerous 'gagging law', somehow made it through a third reading in the House of Commons a few days ago, despite the excessively wide scope of the use of IPNAs (Injunctions to Prevent Nuisance and Annoyance) and PSPOs (Public Space Protection Orders) contained within the Bill, as well as clauses making it practically impossible, especially with recent cuts to legal aid, for innocent people who have been wrongly convicted to get their convictions quashed.
The major issue with IPNAs is that they can be sought by local authorities and NHS trusts (in addition to the police), and can be used to prevent a specific person, even one who has never been charged let alone convicted of a crime, from engaging in behaviour which the authority considers 'likely to cause a public nuisance', which does not have an objective legal definition. This is because all of us have different definitions of what constitutes a 'public nuisance', do we not?
If this Bill becomes law, quirky habits that some of us have, which many of our friends do not consider annoying but a few people do, could potentially become illegal and punishable by imprisonment.
Also, PSPOs will in practice be targeted against protestors and vulnerable groups like homeless people (even though doing so is a violation of the Human Rights Act) which will trample on our hard-earned rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of movement across public ground or private ground normally made accessible to the public.
Both of these, under the Bill, will have a low standard for approval-'balance of probabilities' instead of the tried and tested 'beyond reasonable doubt'.
On another note, the powers local authorities would have under this Bill would also allow them to issue IPNAs to illegally block central government projects they disagree with even though they are not supposed to be able to do this-key examples include HS2. The amount of time police and courts that will be wasted on these injunctions will also mean that resources needed to catch people actually dangerous to the public will be allocated to these unnecessary and unfair injunctions.
To summarise, the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill is badly made (no surprise, as Theresa May proposed it), dangerous and in fact illegal to enforce in practice.
Please give me your thoughts on this.
Alan.
The major issue with IPNAs is that they can be sought by local authorities and NHS trusts (in addition to the police), and can be used to prevent a specific person, even one who has never been charged let alone convicted of a crime, from engaging in behaviour which the authority considers 'likely to cause a public nuisance', which does not have an objective legal definition. This is because all of us have different definitions of what constitutes a 'public nuisance', do we not?
If this Bill becomes law, quirky habits that some of us have, which many of our friends do not consider annoying but a few people do, could potentially become illegal and punishable by imprisonment.
Also, PSPOs will in practice be targeted against protestors and vulnerable groups like homeless people (even though doing so is a violation of the Human Rights Act) which will trample on our hard-earned rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of movement across public ground or private ground normally made accessible to the public.
Both of these, under the Bill, will have a low standard for approval-'balance of probabilities' instead of the tried and tested 'beyond reasonable doubt'.
On another note, the powers local authorities would have under this Bill would also allow them to issue IPNAs to illegally block central government projects they disagree with even though they are not supposed to be able to do this-key examples include HS2. The amount of time police and courts that will be wasted on these injunctions will also mean that resources needed to catch people actually dangerous to the public will be allocated to these unnecessary and unfair injunctions.
To summarise, the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill is badly made (no surprise, as Theresa May proposed it), dangerous and in fact illegal to enforce in practice.
Please give me your thoughts on this.
Alan.
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