Judge Dredd

[DimPrawn]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4793117.stm

Police are considering asking ministers for more powers to impose "instant justice" for anti-social activities.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) may push for more powers to penalise people without a court appearance.

[djfoot]

Holy crud! (Only true 2000AD fans may respond...)

[DimPrawn]

IT contractor caught red handed with IR35 friendly contract in his pocket.

[AtW]

Sounds reasonable so long as its possible (which of course will be possible) to challenge such decisions in court. Case in point - lots of yobs and just young kids without anything to do gets around one place where I and other people feed ducks and geese as well as enjoy ambient sounds of silence. They group around and smoke, drink beer a bit etc. These kids should be in the library or in some sporting facility, not annoy residents.

Say what's wrong with this:

"The ability for police to seize and crush cars driven by those repeatedly driving without registration or insurance, no driving licence or MOT. Instant driving bans could also be imposed ahead of a court appearance"

I am no perfect driver, but I've got insurance, MOT, driving license and will never drive drunk or high on drugs. Some of those yobs drive F-reg cars at ridiculous speed, clearly modded cars too and I bet they did not declare that on their insurance.

[The Lone Gunman]

Holy crud! (Only true 2000AD fans may respond...)

Splundig vor thrig!!!


Eat Judge boot punk. I AM the law!

[Board Game Geek]

Been collecting since Prog 1 :-)

[ASB]

Say what's wrong with this:

"The ability for police to seize and crush cars driven by those repeatedly driving without registration or insurance, no driving licence or MOT. Instant driving bans could also be imposed ahead of a court appearance"

Quite a lot springs to mind.

You may believe that it is fair and proper to penalise someone based on hearsay but until judged by peers (which is what our system demands) they are nothing other than allegations.

To look at your specific example, [I can already hear your rebuttal ] .

The database of insurance policys is though to be 11% inaccurate. It also doesn't cover somebody driving validly on somebody else policys. The DVLA databases are not entirely accurate - but are pretty good. There are still a moderate number of vehicles and licences that are not recorded there apparently. The MOT database is a joke.

The information available to the police at the point of conflict is nothing more conclusive than a probability. It is certainly in no way definitive.

Now, if you want to change the law that mandates you must always have evidence of entitlement when in a car otherwise we will take it away and crush it then fair enough - but that is a very different thing.

<soapbox>There is an increasing tendency to use an ASBO or similar legislation to allow the authorities to crimilise anybody at will. Simply on the basis of "well there is nothing illegal but we don't like it". Increasing these powers will do no more than turn chief constables into judge, jury and executioner. If ACPO do get their way we have transitted completely into a stalinist dictatorship.</soapbox>

[Churchill]

Been collecting since Prog 1 :-)

Tweek was my favourite...

Or was it Judge Hershey?

[AtW]

The database of insurance policys is though to be 11% inaccurate.

Fine - its a risk, if mistake is made then person gets compensated, say double worth of the car: this means that in unlikely even of an error you will get far more than you had, sounds like a nice balance.

But I agree with you in principle - ASBO, instant fines and this are all ways to workaround normal system of due process. However such due process is very expensive for minor cases, so you have only these options:
1) use ASBOs to make further offending much more serious crime for which they get punished
2) greatly increase costs or punishments for such trials - right now such costs are laughable
3) leave things as is

[Dalek Supreme]

Case in point - lots of yobs and just young kids without anything to do gets around one place where I and other people feed ducks and geese as well as enjoy ambient sounds of silence. They group around and smoke, drink beer a bit etc.

Sounds like twenty years in the juve cubes to me, citizen.