Wayne Thomas Black should be released on licence, after serving less than half his sentence.results of appeal to European courts.

Wayne Thomas Black should be released on licence, after serving less than half his sentence. The Home Secretary intervened, arguing that Black was likely to reoffend. However, in a hearing this week, the Appeal Court decided that Home Secretary Jack Straw was in breach of Article Five of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states in Article V (4) that "Everyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful."The "speedily by a court" phrase was the clincher here: Mr Straw is clearly not a court; the Parole Board is not either, but in the words of its Chief Executive Christine Glenn, "I think we should be."
Conservatives argue that the ruling means that the public will lose whatever faith they have left in the justice system if the government is unable to make the final decision on the release of potentially dangerous criminals. It is argued that ministers must be able to take into account public outrage in a way that unelected judges cannot. The opposite view is that few politicians are willing to risk public ire by releasing criminals early, and so those serving long sentences have become victims of political populism and opportunism, even when Parole Boards argue the time is right for them to be released.To make matters worse for the government, the next section of the ECHR states that "Everyone who has been the victim of arrest or detention in contravention of the provisions of this article shall have an enforceable right to compensation", so it is probable that Black and any others like him who have had their demand for parole rejected by the Home Secretary will be suing for compensation for those months and years they have remained behind bars on his orders.Well, despite the government's embarrassment, it only has itself to blame. One of New Labour's earliest acts was incorporating the ECHR into British law via the Human Rights Act of 1998. Since then, a series of wacky "politically correct" rulings which have appeared to favour criminals, terrorists and the deliberately obtuse at the expense of the wider public have led to calls for the Act to be abolished.EURSOC doesn't agree with calls to abolish the Act; a sensible reading of the European Convention on Human Rights suggests no outlandish claims or bias towards criminals. The Convention was pieced together in the aftermath of the Second World War and under the shadow of Soviet Imperialism - it lays out important western liberties which had been ignored by Nazis and were still being abused by the various dictatorships which blighted countries such as Portugal and Spain as late as the 1970s. Moreover, it was a declaration of intent and solidarity with the people of eastern Europe, who suffered under Soviet Communist oppression.No one seriously believes that anyone in western Europe today is having their human rights breached in the way that rights were abused by the Russians, the Nazis or the Dictators. Yet despite our advances, the Convention has never been invoked more frequently, at least in Britain.Why should this be? Certainly, many in Britain's parole boards and legal offices are gripped with radical fervour and see abuse of rights even where there are none. But there must be more to it than this. The Americans have a similar conflict between those who believe that the US Constitution should protect ancient freedoms and those who want it to be interpreted to right perceived wrongs in the here and now.Yet the Americans have powerful figures on both sides of the argument. In Britain, those who believe that the ECHR should be used to free prisoners early, or to keep terrorists in Britain argue with the most conviction and most often win rulings in their favour.The current government has never been shy of using new legislation to redraw Britain's constitutional map or to redefine British history and identity: They find all manner of experts from every walk of life willing to give a radical retelling of tradition. So why is the government so pathetic when it comes to defending a common sense reading of the Human Rights Act, one which the vast majority of people would have no trouble with?You'd think they were putting up a false fight, or pulling their punches. Surely there must be some expert out there who can argue for moderation in the face of radical demands.The government, or the opposition had better find one and soon. "Human Rights" are fast becoming a laughing stock in Britain. We can't be put in the situation where we lose them thanks the the government's wilful neglect.

Posted in: "Human Rights"