Jim Allister's Contributions to Mandatory Sentences Debate
30 November 2011
Below is the speech delivered by TUV leader Jim Allister during the debate on mandatory sentences for offences against older people and an exchange with the DUP’s Jim Wells on the subject in the Assembly chamber yesterday.
Emotionally, I can identify very readily with the motion. All of us, I think, recognise that attacks on the elderly have to be amongst the most repulsive of crimes that can be committed and that, therefore, there have to be severe deterrent sentences in place in order to deal with such wanton attacks. The question, though, is whether proper due process and proper deterrent sentences require mandatory sentences, which remove the discretion from the judge, whose purpose it is to sentence, and which hamstring him with the requirement that he must give a certain minimum sentence with no regard to the circumstances of a particular crime.
The vast majority of people who appear on serious assault charges in respect of elderly people deserve, and will get, serious sentences. However, let me give you a real-life example to evaluate whether there is logic, sense and workability in imposing mandatory sentences. A pensioner paedophile assaulted a young boy. The father of the young boy then took it upon himself to go round to that pensioner’s house. One word borrowed another; he struck him and broke his jaw.
Should that father go to jail for seven years, or for any time, or should he be dealt with through, for example, a suspended sentence? Under what is proposed in the motion, that individual would start with the same minimum sentence as the ghoulish thug who, with violence on his mind, goes into a house and beats up a defenceless old couple. That is where the concept of mandatory sentences begins to fall apart. They are a bit like mandatory coalitions: they do not work in practice. We need to tread carefully.
Given that the motion has come before the House, I confess that I am surprised that no one was able to parade a single case of inadequate sentence. We have had many words, but no Members have stood up and read from a newspaper a description of a case in which someone got an inadequate sentence. Why is that? I am not saying that there have not been inadequate sentences. However, there is a mechanism whereby sentences that are deemed inadequate can be referred to the Court of Appeal, and that mechanism has been used properly many times.
Mr Wells: The learned Member has practised at the Bar for a quarter of a century, and he knows that sentences are not only punishments but deterrents. Does he not accept that, if a thug knows that if he is caught after burgling the home of a little old lady and causing her injury he will go to prison for seven years, he will be less likely to set out on that crime in the first place?
Mr Allister: Of course he should go to prison and of course there should be a deterrent sentence, but is the Member saying that the man from the real-life example that I gave should go to prison for seven years? That is the outworking of what the honourable Member is urging on the House: that there should be no exceptions and that if you, in any circumstances in the eyes of the law, assault someone, you will go to prison, no questions asked.
I am pointing out that some cases are capable of having unique distinguishing factors, and that you cannot apply a one-size-fits-all approach to every case. Let us have severe and tough, deterrent sentences, but let us do it through the due process of the referral of deficient sentences and through the guidelines from the Court of Appeal. I can tell you, Court of Appeal guidelines work: you cannot weave your way around them.
Mr Storey: The Member does not agree that there should be a mandatory sentence. However, if someone were to be sentenced in the context of the attack that he outlined, would the use of the Court of Appeal not be applicable in those circumstances?
Mr Allister: Yes — if the Attorney General thought that it was a lenient sentence. However, I cannot dream of circumstances in which the Attorney General would think that it was a lenient sentence. That intervention demonstrates one of the problems of this debate: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. One Member told the House that there are mandatory sentences for drink-driving offences. There is no mandatory sentence whereby you would go to jail for drink-driving. There is a mandatory disqualification. Of course this must be dealt with, but we must have a system that can deal with everyone.
