Black cab rapist and the perils of short-term justice
THE case of serial sex offender John Worboys, due to be released after serving only an eightyear minimum sentence, shows how justice is too frequently undermined by technical legal details. He could not receive a longer minimum sentence because he was prosecuted for a handful of crimes and only one of those was rape but police suspect he was guilty of many more rapes and sexual assaults – possibly running in to the hundreds – which makes him a clear and present danger to the public.
What is worse is that advice from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), then headed by director of public prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer MP, now a Labour frontbench spokesman, was given to police which led them not to pursue him further for other crimes.
Even Sir Keir Starmer’s senior Labour colleague Yvette Cooper wonders at the sense of this, saying: “His were the most appalling and vile crimes. Very serious questions remain about the decision.”
Senior police murder investigator Colin Sutton agrees: “It might have made a difference if the CPS had prosecuted more of his known crimes.”
This was nine years ago when Labour was still in power and Baroness Scotland, then Labour’s attorney general, also did not appeal against the lenient sentence, thus failing to deliver justice to the many more women who suffered from alleged attacks by the monster Worboys, dubbed the black cab rapist.
AND this despite women’s rights groups condemning the eightyear minimum term and psychiatrists identifying him as a “repetitive predatory sexual offender”.
The decision of Baroness Scotland, now Commonwealth Secretary-General, not to appeal the outrageously short sentence no doubt enabled the legal authorities to wave through his early release.
This touches upon a fundamental principle of justice that in the case of serious offenders it is not enough just to go for a quick prosecution and conviction for reasons of shortterm efficiency and economy because this can result in criminals receiving a lesser