Worboys failings tarnished justice
The case of serial sex offender John Worboys encapsulates much that is wrong with the criminal justice system. Too much decision-making is technocratic and procedural and too little is based on common sense. The failure of David Gauke, the Justice Secretary, to pursue a judicial review of the Parole Board’s initial decision to release Worboys after 10 years in prison was lamentable. He told MPS in January that he opposed the decision, but legal experts advised an appeal would “not be feasible or appropriate”.
Yet the High Court yesterday quashed Worboys’s release pending another hearing, after a courageous challenge brought by two of his victims. Nick Hardwick, the Parole Board chairman, resigned after Mr Gauke told him his position was “no longer tenable”. In that case, neither is Mr Gauke’s. He said the victims were better off taking on the case themselves; but how can it possibly be right that they should have had to use crowdfunding to obtain justice?
Of course ministers need to listen to their advisers, since they could face review themselves; but they do not have to follow slavishly what they say. The anger that accompanied the decision to release Worboys, not least from dozens of women whose cases were never put before the courts or even followed up by the police, should have alerted Mr Gauke to the importance of this matter.
In a statement yesterday to justify his inaction, he said the judicial review was only successful because the victims used a different argument to the one he had considered making. This concerned whether the Parole Board’s decision was “legally rational”, something the court was not in a position to judge. But the High Court said the Parole Board should have taken into account the fact that police think Worboys – who is serving an indeterminate sentence – committed dozens more offences than the 19 for which he was convicted. It is astonishing that it didn’t. Moreover, the Ministry of Justice argument in opposing the release failed to put forward all the relevant material. Mr Gauke said the standing of the victims may have been compromised had he brought the case. But if the two women had not put themselves through the ordeal of a judicial hearing, then how many of the parole reforms now being urgently prepared would have been forthcoming?
Doubtless, Mr Gauke feels hard done by and it is true that mistakes in compiling the ministry’s case against the release were made before he took up the post. But as the man now in charge, he is accountable. His legalistic efforts to pass the buck are unconvincing and risk further undermining confidence in the criminal justice system, already at a low ebb. The Worboys case showed a police force initially reluctant to believe complainants, a Crown Prosecution Service which let down dozens of victims, and a judiciary that handed out an overly lenient eight-year tariff, when one of the offences was rape, which carries a life sentence.
But a wider malaise needs to be addressed. Violent crime is on the rise, with a spate of murders in London recently. The police say they are hampered in keeping the streets safe by Theresa May’s decision as Home Secretary to scale back stop-and-search because she considered it discriminatory. That needs to be reversed.
Police in some areas have stopped treating burglaries and shoplifting seriously. That needs to stop. There was a time when the Conservatives were seen as the party of law and order, but they lost that reputation in the early Nineties when crime rose to record levels. Labour under Tony Blair recognised a weakness and made tackling offending a priority, with tougher sentences, more police and harsher laws.
For the past 20 years or so crime has fallen but there are alarming signs the trend is going into reverse. The Government needs to get a grip on this as a matter of urgency.
Ministers like David Gauke do not have to follow slavishly what their advisers say
But a wider malaise needs to be addressed. Violent crime is on the increase