Harper’s law – a legitimisation of the intensification of punitive repression
By John Moore
The Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, has tabled an amendment to the draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (PCSCB), currently going through Parliament, that would impose a mandatory life sentence on those convicted of killing ‘emergency workers’.
The PCSCB is already the subject of widespread campaigns against the proposed expansion of state powers within it. These as Liberty has pointed out ‘restrict protest, criminalise trespass and erode limits on police powers to collect big data’. Extensive “Kill the Bill” (KTB) protests across the country in the spring showed the breadth of opposition to the bill from a wide range of progressive groups. These protests did not defeat the PCSCB, but they did delay it. It is no coincidence that as the government prepares to bring the bill back, they include this amendment. Opposition to the PCSCB, and its draconian extension of state power, will now be portrayed as support for police killers!
The PCSCB, allows the police to impose conditions on protestors, allowing them to shut down protests they, in their judgement, consider too noisy. In practice, at police discretion, some protest would be criminalised. The bill also criminalises trespass, making it a criminal offence to reside, or to intend to reside, on land in a vehicle (including caravans) without consent. The police will be able to seize vehicles involved in trespass. It is intended to destroy the way of life of Gypsy and Traveller communities.
The proposed new mandatory life sentence is being introduced in response to the death of PC Andrew Harper. Three people were charged with his murder and all were acquitted, one had pleaded guilty to his manslaughter and the other two were convicted of manslaughter. The maximum penalty for manslaughter is life, but the judge decided in this case it would have been inappropriate and sentenced all three to determinate sentences. The Attorney-General appealed this decision unsuccessfully. This law will achieve nothing in practice. It’s role is entirely ideological - legitimising the state’s punitive power.
Police officers being killed on duty in Britain is extremely rare, about one every two years over the last century. Since PC Harper’s death over two years ago only one officer, Sgt Matt Ratana, has been killed on duty. Over the last ten years only four police officers have been killed on duty. In fact a police officer is approximately four times more likely to kill their partner than they are to be killed on duty. In addition, over the last decade 164 people have died in or following police custody in England and Wales. The new sentence will be extended to other emergency workers including prison officers. Again there is little evidence to support this proposal. Joe Sim showed that between 1990 and 2000 one prison officer was killed whilst between 1990 and 1999 1,350 people died in the prisons, psychiatric hospitals and police cells of England and Wales.
For the families and friends of those who die at the hands of the state, justice proves difficult and elusive. Whilst the agents and agencies of the state receive all the funding they need for their representation families are denied legal aid. Without this they are unable to meaningfully participate in the processes of investigation, learning and accountability. This bill offers nothing to these families who will continue to be denied a voice.
What these figures show is that it is not the officers of the state that need protecting from the public, but the public that need defending from them. The PCSCB remains a bill that seeks to increase state power. It endangers not only the rights of citizens but increases their risk of violence from the state and its agents. In particular it deliberately targets Black people and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, discrimination that the government claims is “objectively justified”. This amendment is seeking to suggest that it is the servants of the state that need protecting from the public. The reverse is actually the truth and the PCSCB threatens to make this even more so. We must campaign even more determinedly to Kill The Bill.