The next big miscarriage of justice makes it to the BBC. Great.
But this is impressively dishonest from Jim Gamble, former supercop and head of the Home Office’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre:
He also defended the record of the operation and told the Radio 4 programme that more than 90% of the individuals tracked by police had pleaded guilty.
“That’s not about credit card fraud,” he said.
“That’s people who – the allegation has been levelled against them, the evidence has been collected and they, at court or through accepting an adult caution, which 600-plus of them did, have said I am guilty of this offence.”
Ah, police logic. We got a conviction, so they’re guilty. They must be guilty, because we got them. This is why they accepted cautions – because they were offered them as an alternative to being raped or stabbed in jail.
I’ve no idea why anyone would think being falsely accused would be less frightening than being accused of something you actually did, especially when it was based on “evidence” that was given out as near-infallible and was incomprehensible to most jurors. Gamble, of course, is not going to rock the boat now he has his own little budgetivorous organism.
Well done- the use of the caution on a mass scale is a dead giveaway that it was being used as blackmail. The more of this case is opened up, the nastier it gets.
Btw, from what I’ve been told, male rape is very uncommon indeed in UK prisons- apparently unlike the US- although stabbing, beating etc apparently are very common. I know from my middle-class efforts as a prison visitor that to be labelled a ‘nonce’ really does mean that a prisoner has to be segregated for his own safety.
The thing is, legally speaking accepting a caution is an admission of guilt and does give you a record. For this type of offence, these days, it’ll get you on the SO Register as well. So, why would anyone admit to being guilty of a sex offence if they hadn’t in fact done it? An unimaginative and target-oriented type of mind might well conclude that guilt had been pretty much established.
Well, I did say it was *police* logic.