On April 8, 2011, Keir Starmer joined some of Britain’s top legal eagles at a monthly meeting of the Sentencing Council, the ultra-powerful quango that tells judges and magistrates how convicted criminals ought to be punished.
It was all in a day’s work for our then-Director of Public Prosecutions, who was joined by 12 fellow members of the committee, plus no fewer than 15 officials and observers, around what must have been one of Britain’s longest conference tables.
Issues they discussed ranged from the ‘media coverage’ of a recent consultation on drugs sentencing, which had seen members attacked for their alleged liberal bias, to proper tariffs for burglary, assault and anti-social behaviour.
But it was the seventh item on the agenda that – for Starmer, at least – would eventually prove the most controversial.
Minutes of the gathering, which was chaired by Sir Brian Leveson (of Press inquiry fame), show that Sir Keir and his fellow members were presented with ‘initial findings’ of a review into ‘current sentencing practice for sexual offences’.
Minutes of the gathering, which was chaired by Sir Brian Leveson (of Press inquiry fame), show that Sir Keir (pictured) and his fellow members were presented with ‘initial findings’ of a review into ‘current sentencing practice for sexual offences’
It was the start of a lengthy process that would end, three years down the line, with a series of dramatic – and some might say woefully misguided – changes to the way in which courts in England and Wales deal with these most heinous of crimes.
During that period, Sir Keir attended 21 of 23 meetings at which the Sentencing Council formulated new guidelines related to 50 different sex offences.
The crimes that were looked at, during this review, ranged from rape and sexual assault to prostitution, grooming, sex-trafficking, voyeurism, exposure and child pornography.
Eventually, the Council decided that 20 of these crimes could, in certain circumstances, be punished via community orders rather than prison sentences.
That number include a total of eight offences where the principal victim is a child. They range from ‘sexual assault of a child under 13’ to ‘possession of an indecent photograph of a child’ to ‘paying for the sexual services of a child’ and ‘arranging or facilitating the sexual exploitation of a child’.
This all happened on Sir Keir’s watch and there is absolutely no evidence that he ever objected to these (on paper) remarkably soft sentencing guidelines, which took effect in April 2014.
At no point did he publicly voice so much as a flicker of concern about the fact that introducing them could result in significant numbers of child sex offenders being spared prison.
And if the earnest Director of Public Prosecutions happened to voice any scepticism in a more private forum – for example during any one of the 21 Sentencing Council meetings listed above – those remarks failed to find their way into any official minutes that were subsequently published, all of which have now been reviewed by the Mail.
In other words, one might fairly argue that Starmer bears significant responsibility for the fact that, from 2014 until the present day, it has been possible for child sex offenders who come before the courts in England and Wales to avoid jail.
Yet fast forward to last Thursday, and the same Keir Starmer could be found claiming voters ought to somehow blame Rishi Sunak for this regrettable state of affairs.
Yet fast forward to last Thursday, and the same Keir Starmer could be found claiming voters ought to somehow blame Rishi Sunak for this regrettable state of affairs
In what Labour grandee David Blunkett derided as a ‘gutter attack’, the Leader of the Opposition presided over Labour’s official Twitter account cynically asking a rhetorical question: ‘Do you think adults convicted of sexually assaulting children should go to prison? Rishi Sunak doesn’t.’
The post, illustrated with Sunak’s photo and signature, sought to justify this allegation by noting that ‘4,500 adults convicted of sexually assaulting children served no prison time’ since the Conservatives took office.
The truth, as it happens, is that Sunak bears little responsibility for this statistic. He wasn’t even an MP until 2015, and under British law, it’s judges and magistrates, rather than politicians, who decide whether individual criminals ought to go to prison.
Starmer’s decision to go on the offensive, on this front, is not just dishonest but also deeply hypocritical.
For the Labour leader’s own track record gives every indication that he, rather than the Prime Minister, is the one who takes the view child sex offenders ought to be spared jail.
You can see this pertinent fact laid bare in black and white by browsing through the Sentencing Council’s ‘Sexual Offences Guideline Consultation’, issued from its offices at the Royal Courts of Justice on December 6, 2012.
Spanning some 370 pages, its publication followed discussions that had taken place at no fewer than 15 monthly meetings that Starmer had attended, in person, over the previous 18 months.
The contents of the consultation also formed the basis of the new guidelines that were issued two years later and have, largely, been in place ever since.
The document makes clear, during the opening pages of its introduction, that Starmer and his colleagues on the Council had decided that certain sex crimes were insufficiently serious to justify a prison sentence.
‘The Council believes,’ the document states, ‘that in some cases both the victim and the public will be better protected by the imposition of punishment in the form of a rigorous community order, with programmes which challenge offenders to change their behaviour and above all not to reoffend’.
For the Labour leader’s own track record gives every indication that he, rather than the Prime Minister, is the one who takes the view child sex offenders ought to be spared jail
It goes on to list various crimes that Starmer and fellow members of the Council reckoned should be punished via community orders.
These include the offences of ‘assault by penetration,’ ‘sexual activity with a child,’ the ‘sexual assault of a child under 13,’ ‘causing or inciting a child to indulge in sexual activity,’ ‘inciting a child family member to engage in sexual activity,’ ‘causing a child to watch a sexual act,’ the ‘possession of an indecent photograph of a child’ and ‘arranging or facilitating child prostitution or pornography’.
Helpfully, the consultation document – which, let us remember, was produced during Starmer’s time on the Council – then lists a number of ‘scenarios’ in which judges might choose to impose non-custodial terms on sex offenders.
‘For example, a judge sentencing an offender convicted of spying on women in community changing rooms with a hidden camera (voyeurism), may decide to impose a community order of up to three years,’ reads one such case study.
Very essence of grubby hypocrisyAnother ‘scenario’ proposed an incident where ‘an offender approaches a woman at a crowded bus stop and grabs her breast over her clothing’. The document continues: ‘The offender has no previous convictions.
There is no doubt that this would be a very distressing experience for the victim and the sentencer will want to impose a sentence that prevents other women from being assaulted in a similar way in the future.
‘For this type of case, the judge may wish to impose a community order for a period of up to two years with a requirement that the offender attends a sex offender treatment programme where his offending behaviour can be challenged and addressed.’
Child sex offences are, crucially, among those which should in some circumstances be dealt with via community orders, the document released on Starmer’s watch continues, so long as the crime is ‘non-penetrative’.
This particularly applies in cases where there is ‘no evidence of grooming or exploitation or significant disparity in age’.
So it goes that a crime cited in the document involves a case where an ‘an 18-year-old male au pair lives with a family and is responsible for being in sole charge of a 14-year-old girl after school, driving her home from school and cooking dinner.
The truth, as it happens, is that Sunak bears little responsibility for this statistic. He wasn’t even an MP until 2015, and under British law, it’s judges and magistrates, rather than politicians, who decide whether individual criminals ought to go to prison
The au pair and girl become close and are caught by the parents in a state of undress kissing and touching each other’.
Another revolves around circumstances where ‘the victim (V) is a 12-year-old girl and lives next door to the offender (O) who is 19.
They have known each other for a number of years. O lives at home with his parents and has learning difficulties with very few friends of his own age.
V and O begin to spend a lot of time together and O asks V if she will be his girlfriend.
There are no signs of exploitation with both believing they are in a genuine relationship. They have sex on two occasions.’
As for child pornography, the document specifies that ‘a non-custodial starting point is recommended for possession and distribution of level C images and for possession of level B images’.
It adds: ‘For offences involving indecent images, there may be cases where the sentencer considers that a lengthy community order with a sexual offences treatment programme, such as the i-sotp81 programme (specifically designed to treat internet offenders), will be more appropriate than a very short custodial sentence’.
It should be stressed that there may be a perfectly legitimate case for dishing out non-custodial terms in some of the circumstances described above.
Justice isn’t always black and white, and experts on the Sentencing Council were entitled to take the view that for less serious offences, community orders can provide an effective way of punishing an offender and protecting the public.
What Keir Starmer isn’t entitled to do, however, is sit on a committee that allows ‘sexual assault of a child’ to sometimes attract a non-custodial sentence, and then – a decade later – blame someone else for the consequences.
As any good lawyer would argue, that represents the very essence of grubby hypocrisy.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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