That’s what Shami Chakrabati said just now on BBC Breakfast.
But is it wrong? People who take advantage of our generosity — criminals of non-British origin — have no right to our protection. They should know what their home country is like and, while this sounds illiberal, they have a choice about whether to commit a crime.
And, shop-lifting is not a minor crime, no matter what Ms. Liberty claims.
Your first post will be moderated -- if it is not spam and is not illegal it will be approved. Subsequent posts by you will automatically be approved.
Some words will automatically cause your comment to be blacklisted and there will be no warning. Avoid referring to the names of pharmaceutical drugs. If in doubt, copy your comment so that you can paste and amend it.
Apologies for any inconvenience; blame the spammers
May 3rd, 2006 at 5:06 pm
Shami is a fool. More liberty for criminals means reduced liberty for everyone else.
She is actually supporting reduced liberty for the majority of people, but she is too blinded by ideology to see it.
It is wrong to send a foreign criminal back to a country where they would face death, if you care more about the foreigner than you do about the British citizens! which unfortunately many of New Labour do.
Thats the problem with the asylum system, it only takes into account the needs of the asylum seeker and not the affect on the host population.
If we take people from countries that are in war-torn anarchy we can’t expect them to suddenly become model citizens over night, maybe not ever.
May 3rd, 2006 at 5:59 pm
I think you are absolutely right. The ideological cancer which hides behind ‘libertarianism’ and to which Chakrabati herself plays host, fails to see society holistically or recognise the needs of the majority.
Most Brits don’t understand how any individual should have leave to remain in our society when he/she has by choice decided to live outside it. People who migrate to the UK just to live in anomie should be expelled. They work against the rest of us and contribute nothing. We therefore owe them nothing. It’s all about choice after all.
There is a simple moral imperative here, which human rights legislation is undermining.
May 3rd, 2006 at 6:18 pm
There was just a lawyer of some kind on the BBC saying we can’t deport these people because of UN refugee rules, human rights rules, European rules… blah blah.
These people don’t seem to believe we are a sovereign nation..
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Why bother going to all the trouble and expense of deporting them? Why not let members of the public hunt them with crossbows? The ex-offenders may or may not get killed in the same way they may or may not get killed back in Somalia or wherever.
In the event of a plucky taxpayer not making a clean kill and merely injuring his quarry, Charles Clarke can give a thumbs up or thumbs down from a Home Office balcony.
May 4th, 2006 at 12:22 am
“Shami is a fool. More liberty for criminals means reduced liberty for everyone else.
She is actually supporting reduced liberty for the majority of people, but she is too blinded by ideology to see it.
I don’t think she’s a fool. She’s the one who turned Liberty from a branch of the Labour party to a bi-partisan organisation. She avoids the topics that Left and Right libertarians disagree on (like tax) and concentrates on the things we generally do.
She has recognised that there is a difference between negative and postive liberties - your inalienable rights a state must respect and things the Left (and apparently you) believe you have a right to expect from the government.
May 4th, 2006 at 12:33 am
Yeah well Justin, easy to take the piss. But the difference is Britain has a duty to punish, educate and rehabilitate British criminals, we have no such duty to the rest of the world.
Let the UN handle it! I’m sure they are capable.
May 4th, 2006 at 12:44 am
What do you mean Mark, I believe we have a right to expect the government protect us from criminals yes, and especially foreign criminals, because if someone is a guest in this country we should be able to expect them to behave themselves.
If your kid spits at you, you would discipline him, if I was a guest in your house and I spit at you, you would kick me out.
Yes, she is a fool if she things giving asylum to murdering maniacs is good for the liberty of this country.
May 4th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Dave, I wasn’t taking the piss. I was just point out that there is no moral difference between returning an ex-criminal to Somalia and allowing you to hunt him with a crossbow.
May 4th, 2006 at 10:48 am
Justin’s right. But at the same time, his example deliberatly adds emotives. On Tuesday, the BBC carried a similar example (options 2 and 3 on the site).
The crossbow is pushing the fat man and the deportation is the switch.
I think Dave is right, we have a moral obligation to those who are British — those who spit at our hospitality are infringing on the liberty of people already here and have no right to our protection from their own stupidity.
May 4th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Dave,
I think you’re going down the same road as Tony Blair, Charles Clarke et al who say the most important right is “the right not to be blown up”. We have no such right and to imagine we do is to trade liberty for security. Governments may and should protect us from violent harm but it is not a right in the same way as self-defence is a right.
A country is not private property, it is a jurisdiction. You can be a guest of a citizen of this country but not a guest of the country itself. I do support deporting criminals who cause violent harm to others or steal private property. However we have no moral obligations to people who are British that we do not have to every human being. Moreover, our moral obligations are upon individuals, not the state.
May 4th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Mark, we do have an extra moral obligation to those who are British because someone who is born and grows up and lives here all their life is fully exposed to the British education, health, work force, and general British culture. If something goes wrong and that person turns out badly then we as a country share some of the responsibility for that, we do not have the same responsibility towards foreigners especially those who have no previous connection to our country.
I am not one of those crazy Marxists who believe crime is all because of society and not the fault of the individual, but as a country we should ‘try’ to do our best for the people here.
I am nothing like Tony Blair, I despise his government, I certainly don’t think we should be locking people up without trial as he does etc etc.
But yes we as a country do have a right to expect our leaders to protect us from agressive foreigners, thats what our leaders are paid for, thats why the nation state came into existence, a group of people getting together for common security.
If we can’t rely on the state for common security you will start to find people look elsewhere, such as religion, cults, racists groups, etc.
May 4th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Justin, there is plently of moral difference.
Hunting someone down with a crossbow would be murder, sending someone back to Somalia is not murder, people live and work in Somalia every day. 7 million people live in Somalia and it has a life expectancy of 48 years, which isn’t good by Western standards but isn’t so bad compared to other African countries, and would be 10 years longer life than PC Beshenivsky.
May 4th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Gav, thats an interesting example, with the runaway trolley car.
But, I can answer the difference.
I would not push the fat guy because he would clearly die and it would be wrong of me to sacrifice an innocent person. But I would flick the switch because 5 people are not going to be able to jump out of the way of the runaway trolley but one person has a chance, maybe a good chance. Thats the difference, the fat guy would be certain death, but the one guy in hindsight might have been certain death but a the time of the decision it would look as if he had the much greater chance to escape than the 5.
May 4th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
Dave, forgive me but you’re deliberately avoiding the point of the mental games — there’s no chance the man will get out of the way and it is not something you’re asked to consider.
Given that a large majority believe it is okay to flick a switch but a similar majority think it is wrong to push someone in the way to save the same number of lives, I think it is fair to say that we think it is okay to send someone to their certain death if, in doing so, we are ensuring the safety of Britons (our first priority, surely?) and sending a clear message to other foreign nationals who think they can commit a crime in England and be treated gently.
May 4th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Yes, but its not a question of cold hard reality, its about how humans perceive it.
I imagined the situation in my own mind, the trolley car rolling towards a group of 5 or to a single person, and with a split second to make the decision, I think most humans would naturally feel someone in the group is bound to get hit, but the lone person has a chance to escape. Even if that is totally unrealistic, the feeling that there is a ‘chance’ would be used to justify the moral decision.
The 2 scenarios might be the same when written down logically but when the human mind thinks them through it sees them differently, imo.
In the real world there is no guarentee that the fat guy is definately going to stop the trolley car, and no guarentee the one person is going to be hit.
The scenario is like a trick of the mind, theoretically they are the same, but the brain knows that in the real world they are not.
Thats why most people support action in the first but not the second.
If I took the facts as written and knew the results clearly before taking action, it would be immoral to act in either case, assuming I wasn’t emotionally connected.
May 5th, 2006 at 1:00 am
Dave,
“as a country we should ‘try’ to do our best for the people here
I disagree, as individuals we should try to help others but we have no right to expect anything from the state and the state has no right to act on our behalf.
“we as a country do have a right to expect our leaders to protect us”
“we” are not a country. I am a sovereign individual and so are you. We may ask our leaders to defend us but it is not a right and we have no right to be defended at the cost of another’s liberty.
May 5th, 2006 at 2:04 am
We have no right to expect our government to defend us from bombs at the cost of a terrorists liberty?
Is that what you are trying to say, mark?
Seems crazy to me.
May 5th, 2006 at 8:30 am
I’m all for small government, Mark, but this must be tempered with the needs of the electorate. Some things, no matter how rump-esque is the government, will remain state-controlled. Those things include criminal justice.
May 5th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
[…] I have just spoken to Gav and I want to make it clear on his behalf that when he said “non-British origin” he meant, those without a British passport — not those who’s origin is not Britain. […]
May 5th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
I agree that criminal justice should remain state controlled and we may certainly ask our government to protect us. My point is that our security is not a right that may be traded off against our inalienable rights. Security must come second to liberty.
“We have no right to expect our government to defend us from bombs at the cost of a terrorists liberty?
As I said above it is not a right per se so much as a reasonable expectation. If by a terrorist you mean someone who has been convicted in a court of law beyond reasonable doubt then no, that’s not what I am saying. However at any lower burden of proof it is not only an imposition on the liberty of the terrorist but on the liberty of us all.
May 5th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Absolutely. What the real debate is, is whether once the burden of proof has been established, which it has in these cases, whether we should stomach the expense of imprisoning foreign nationals.
Given that a foreign national has served his or her crime, the debate then moves onto whether we should continue to allow that person who has ignored our laws and abused our hospitality to live in this country or whether we should return them to their country.
Personally I have no moral qualms about ignoring what fate they may come to in their home country give that that is another sovereign state who’s customs and laws, while they may be abhorent, are sovereign and not our concern. If someone who is not a British passport holder commits a crime in the UK they should expect to serve their sentence and be returned to their home country.
It troubles me greatly to find myself agreeing with Charles Clarke, but in this case he was right to say that they should be sent back by default and that a stay of deportation should be considered rather than deportation be considered in and of itself.
I hope that makes my feelings clear, though there is a chance there is flu-induced nonsense in my comments here!
May 5th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Any kind of law enforcement reduces peoples liberty, Mark.
There is a trade-off, the liberty of a thug to walk down a street beating people up translates to the lost of liberty of the little old lady too scared to leave the house. Liberty for the little of lady to walk the streets in safety means a lost of liberty for the thugs.
May 7th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
We really should consider a “one-in, one-out” policy whereby we get rid of scum and welcome good people…
May 7th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
That’s the best answer, Mr Carrot (I shall call you Jasper).
But practically, we must remember that whatever the Home Office decides to do, it will continue to be the case that the Home Office doesn’t know what the other fingers are doing, let alone the other hand…
May 8th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
Dave,
Why on earth should law enforcement reduce people’s liberty? Laws are, or should be, a means to prevent us from doing things we cannot possibly have a right to do.
You own your life liberty and property. No-one has a right to take that away from you and you therefore do not have a right to take that away from others. Necassarily that means you cannot empower a government to take the life, liberty or property of another - however you may ask a government to protect you from others who try to take your life, liberty or property.
In the case of the old lady, she does not have an absolute right to feel safe but she does have a right to take self-protection measures to feel safer (such as carrying mace or a taser). The thug does have a right to walk down the street but not to beat people up. If he assaults someone then he is overstepping his rights by infringing on the liberty of another. It then becomes reasonable to ask the government to step in and imprison the thug. Since this is an act of self-defence there is no loss of liberty to the thug.
As long as laws are used in self-defence and not to enforce our views on others then there is no loss of liberty involved.
May 8th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
In the strictest sense, Mark, you may be right, but I think most people would accept that imprisonment is a loss of liberty and that that is exactly what should happen to a criminal.
May 8th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Mark, you are redefining liberty and ‘rights’ to suit your own ideology.
Liberty: “The condition of being physically and legally free from confinement, servitude, or forced labor.”
If the state imprisons someone for whatever reason justified or not, self-defence or not, the state is taking their liberty away.
There ‘is’ a trade off between the freedoms of the criminals and the freedoms of the law abiding victims.
May 8th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
“In the strictest sense, Mark, you may be right, but I think most people would accept that imprisonment is a loss of liberty and that that is exactly what should happen to a criminal.
I don’t believe that restraining a person who attacks me is infringing upon their liberty. I therefore do not feel that asking the government to restrain them is infringing upon their liberty.
Yes, if you look in a dictionary then you will find several definitions of liberty (of which Dave has picked one) but I am referring to a political liberty and particularly negative political liberty. Different meanings of liberty may be used in different contexts but in a constitutional sense the imprisonment of a person who means you harm does not take away from liberty itself.
There is no trade off between the freedoms of criminals and law-abiding citizens. If we live in a country that respects liberty then we are free. If we live in a country that does not then we are not free. If the law goes beyond what the constitution of a free country may allow or lowers the burden of proof then it really doesn’t matter whether you are a law-abiding citizen or a criminal, you are denied your liberty.
May 9th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
I think it should depend on how long people have been in this country and how serious their crime is. If someone comes to this country on criminal business, or comes as a student and commits a serious crime, he or she should be kicked out after finishing their sentence. I don’t think anyone disagrees on that.
I wrote an entry on my blog about this issue, because I could see this country going down the same route as the USA on this issue - and what they ended up doing was dumping large numbers of criminals who had lived in the USA since childhood, who had not chosen to take advantage of America’s hospitality but whose parents had done, and got involved in gangs after living in parts of town where gangs are commonplace, on their third-world home countries which then had to deal with the crime these people brought back. I don’t think that exporting British criminal culture to poor countries by sending home its foreign elements is ethical.
I also don’t think it’s ethical to kick out someone who’s been here since childhood for anything but the most serious of offences (rape and the like). I have heard of people being threatened with deportation from the USA for offences like assault, and this is indeed what is happening here - as in this example of a man from Chile who arrived as a refugee nearly 30 years ago and is now being threatened with deportation after injuring someone in a bar brawl - and he has only been so threatened since the foreign prisoners scandal made headlines. In this case, it seems the local community don’t consider him a threat and there is a campaign to keep him in Scotland. (The stories do not say whether he does or does not have children; in the USA they are not shy to deprive American children of foreign parents.)
With all the fuss about masses of foreign criminals walking the streets who could have been kicked out, people don’t ask whether the offences are so serious that kicking the offender out of the country is necessary. I’m sure a lot of people don’t think causing an unpremeditated injury in a fight does merit kicking someone out of the country when they have been here since childhood.
May 10th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Of course, Yusuf, you’re right. It’s easy to get caught up in the nationality of a person and not consider the ‘effective nationality’ if I can put it that way.
I think there should be an assumption of deportation and that we should trust judges to look at cases such as those listed above and use their judgement.
May 10th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
But you gave only simple examples yusuf, there are a lot of grey areas.
It depends what you mean by from childhood, the somalian wanted in connection with the murder of a British Police woman came to this country when he was 13 was give refugee status and within the next 7 years had commited a string of robberies and armed robberies.
He came as a child, should we allow him to stay, even though he commited serious crimes very shortly after arrival?
On the news a few mins ago, it just mentioned the Afghan hijackers who hijacked a plane using guns and bombs to fly them to Britain to seek asylum, they are still in Britain ofcourse although the government is trying to reject them, the courts are supporting the hijackers…
Now I feel sympathy for people fleeing the taliban but can we really give refuge to passager plane hijackers??
Seems like a reward.
There is a big problem in this country of foreign fraud gangs, which is not a violent crime and some would say not all that serious (compared to things like rape), but if these people came to this country purely to take advantage for criminal gain, surely we must tell them to leave?
What needs to be established is whether the criminal came to this country and started commiting crimes straight away (within a few years, maybe 5 or so), ie abusing our good nature. Or if the person was a genuine long term immigrant with a good history but made a mistake, or got into a situation out of their control (like a pub fight).