A criminal justice system that is self funded.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY

Summary and Aims of our policy.

It is impossible to overstate the far reaching importance of the criminal justice system. It is the enforcing system of all law and order, and as such is an essential component of any civilised society. Without a fully effective system of criminal justice and discipline, there will be many breeches of law and order throughout all of society; the result of which is crime, violence, and suffering for everyone.

Our aim is to completely restructure the current criminal justice system, so that it becomes an efficient, simple, self funding, and fair system of justice, that protects all people, and that prosecutes and rehabilitates all criminals.

Current unresolved issues.

There are fundamental issues with our current criminal justice system, we list them as follows.

Vastly over complex system of laws, which no one knows, and therefore no one can follow.
No simple and effective moral laws, to make lesser offences unlawful, and clarify more serious crimes.
No accountability, criminals do not in general pay for any of the costs of the criminal justice system, the innocent tax payer does. This creates further issues 4 & 5 below:
Lack of resources meaning it is unviable to investigate and convict many small crimes.
Lack of resources meaning more serious crimes are not properly investigated or prosecuted.
Slow and inefficient system.
Criminals have the right to silence, and thus are always able to hamper or defeat the process of justice.
Biased presentation of evidence at trials in prosecution or defence of the accused. There are no key players in criminal trials by jury, who have the role of presenting the unbiased truth, all presentation of evidence is biased.
Lawyers defending clients who they know are guilty of the crime, and manufacturing untruthful defences as a result.
Judgement by a jury who are untrained in law, forensic science, and criminology.
Bias in jury decisions, due to manipulation of the facts by prosecution and defence.
Bias in jury decisions due to the known psychology of dominant people in the jury influencing submissive members of the jury.
Extreme complication, length, and biased presentation of all evidence, resulting in the manipulation, confusion, and overwhelming of juries, which then leads to poor jury decisions as a result.
Inadequate authority and disciplining of people convicted of crimes.
No effective rehabilitation of criminals.

Our Policy - How it resolves the issues and achieves the aims.

Our policies are as follows:

Simplify all legislation see our Supreme Law Policy.
Make convicted criminals pay for all costs of their investigation, trial and conviction, and prison if they are sent there.
Make the right to silence illegal.
Carryout investigations through a standard process, which then documents all available evidence, for the judges inspection and judgement (and public inspection).
Eliminate trials and the biased presentation of the evidence, replace them with a judicial revue of all evidence.
Replace juries with highly trained Judges.
Use a fixed system of punishment.

We explain our criminal justice system as follows:

Reporting and investigation:

Once any crime is reported to the police, it will always be fully investigated. Suspects are given the opportunity to plead guilty at the first opportunity, if they wish to avoid the costs of investigation. The process of investigation can proceed by a standard process, and this process remains as private as is possible, until after the investigation and judgement is concluded, there is no public viewing or media involvement other than what is helpful to the investigation. This process would start with immediately visiting the crime scene, if appropriate, and collecting all forensic evidence, and then go through all the other standard phases of investigation, such as carrying out forensic tests, interviewing all witnesses and taking statements, investigating the crime, and following all leads to their ultimate conclusion. The investigation will be coordinated by an online algorithm, developed by expert investigators and the government. All evidence will be logged to the case, such as forensic reports, videos of witness interviews, and witness statements. The investigation is carried out by highly trained investigators, who follow strict disciplined procedures, which give all witnesses all opportunity to freely present the whole truth, without any influences of any form being applied to them. The accused is given all opportunities to explain how they are innocent (assuming they pleaded innocent) and defend their position, and any avenues of enquiry opened by them must be fully investigated and corroborated if possible, in order to establish the truth. Equally so all other witnesses evidence would be treated in the same way.

Witness cannot decline to be interviewed, and must answer every relevant question put to them fully, any failure to do so would immediately constitute evidence of guilt, or possibly intimidation of a witness by the accused. In this later case, witness identities can be appropriately protected so that the are safe to give their evidence, this could be omission of their identity from the public record of the investigation, or in more extreme cases omission of the entire witness evidence form the public record. However all evidence will be kept, so that it can be reviewed at any point in the future. Witnesses will also receive police protection if necessary. The police have the power to arrest, and detain anyone they have reason to believe is at risk to the public, and question anyone who they have reason to believe might have relevant information.

Trial and decision:

We wish to labour the point that we find it highly dysfunctional that in all criminal courts of law, although the fundamental purpose of trials is to find the truth, no one in a trial is tasked with actually presenting the truth. Prosecution and defence lawyers all present their biased version of the truth, call witnesses to support their agenda, and try to discredit witnesses that do not support it. How can this ever be the best method of finding the truth, indeed many high profile trials descend into public theatre? We believe this system needs abandoning, and replacing with an unbiased presentation of the truth, as follows:

Once the investigation is complete, the full body of evidence will be given to a judge (as a computer file), or three judges independently, in the case of serious crimes. This evidence would be all the witness statements, the forensic reports, expert reports, the results of leads that were followed, etc. There is no presentation of the case to a judge in any way, other than a direct and straightforward passing over of all the evidence and facts. There is no trial and the biased presentation of evidence that it always entails. Instead highly trained judge/s who understand all areas of law, forensic science, and criminology, simply revue all the evidence, and then decide, if beyond all reasonable doubt, suspects are guilty or not. Once a decision is reached, the entirety of the file is made public (other than protected witness statements), along with the judges assessment and ruling, so that anyone can view all aspects of the case and its conclusions. This system is essentially what is done in lesser cases that are decided by judges rather than juries.

Sentencing:

Sentencing is pre determined and carried out through a simple table where crimes are given a degree of seriousness, say 1 to 10, and each level has a fixed penalty. The most trivial of crimes would be level 1, and these could be resolved by the parties independently of the police, the penalty being an apology, and any agreed rectification. A level 2 crime would have to be reported, and would attract a fine, a level 3 crime a larger fine, eventually progressing to prison, and greater sentence lengths for each level of crime. If the suspect is found guilty, but did not plead guilty, then they would also be guilty of lying to the court, and the judge would award the correct penalty for this, additionally to that for the original crime.

Funding:

The algorithm for the investigation, would include an analysis of the costs of the investigation, and the figure for total cost would be presented in the file to the judge. If the judge finds the accused guilty, they will be ordered to pay the full costs of their investigation, the judgement, any fines appropriate, costs of rehabilitation, and all their costs of prison, if they are sentenced.

Example (please note that all costs and sentences are estimates):

Everyone is God believes in full accountability, zero tolerance, and the right to safety, lawfulness, and justice, at all times. To give an example of how stringent our enforcement of this is at every stage, we give the following example:

A shoplifter steals a bottle of wine worth £5. The crime is filmed by CCTV, and reported to the police. An investigation begins, and a male suspect is found. The first question the suspect is asked, is if he is guilty of the crime, he denies it. The investigation continues and is completed quickly and simply. Given the CCTV and police surveillance camera evidence, along with the wine bottle at his house with both the suspects, and the shop owners DNA on it, and matching set of clothes and shoes, the judge rules that this evidence proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the suspect is guilty. The total cost of the investigation and judgement is £2,780, the judge awards these costs to the criminal, £5 to the shop owner, and a £1000 fine. The evidence proves that the criminal also lied when he was asked if he committed the crime, the Judge awards a £2000 fixed penalty fine for this. The judge also orders 25 hours of one to one therapy to address the root cause of the criminals offending, at one hour per week. The cost of this is £45 per hour, which the criminal will also have to pay. The criminal discuses and agrees payment terms with the judge of £80 per week to pay back the costs and fine, and £45 a week for therapy, an initial total of £125 per week.

After one week, the criminal fails to pay his first instalment, and does not attend therapy. The criminal is arrested, and immediately receives a predetermined standard sentence of 1 year (minimum) due to the failure to pay agreed criminal costs and attend therapy. The cost of arrest is £470, however the criminal also became violent during the arrest, attempted to strike the officers, and threatened them with further violence. This was all recorded on the body cameras of the police. This constitutes further serious crimes, of which a simple investigation, and judgement results in £600 of costs, and sentencing of seven years in prison. The total costs are now, £2,780 plus £1000 plus £2000 plus £5 plus £45 plus £470 plus £600= £6,900, and the total prison sentence is eight years. In prison the criminal will have to work full time, pay back the £6,900, all his costs of prison, his ongoing prison rehabilitation, and follow strictly all rules. If he fails to do any of this, his food will be withdrawn.

The criminal always has a simple choice, be fully law abiding, and fully accountable for what he has done, or go without food, see our Prison & Rehabilitation Policy. The prison is a fully disciplined, functional, and rehabilitative environment; prisoners will have all opportunities to better themselves, but will not be let out of prison until they have paid all of their costs, and are deemed fully rehabilitated. The criminal would have been fully aware of all of this prior to his crime, as he would have received extensive education on the law and the criminal justice system, throughout all of his schooling.

We hope this makes the basic workings of our criminal justice system clear, at every stage the criminal is encouraged and given opportunity to own up to their crime, and minimise the consequences of it, if they do not, they will have growing consequences, which they will not be able to avoid. Whatever their choices are, it will always end with them paying all their debts, being rehabilitated, and returning to society in a safe and law abiding way. There are many details that are not described here, but would be part of our simplified and fully functional system. This system would resolve most of the 14 issues mentioned at the top of this page, however it would not deal with all of them, and does not address in any way the the root causes of crime.

Ultimate policy.

Everyone is God is completely clear that if someone has gone as far as committing crimes and getting themselves into prison, this immediately demonstrates that many systems have had to completely fail. The root of all crime (and all human dysfunction) lies in the way we bring up our children and educate them, and therefore the first and universal failure in any situation, is a failure of parenting. Children who are brought up in a fully balanced, loving, and disciplined environment, will never be orientated towards committing crime. For someone to enter prison, there would have to be further failures in the social care system, the education system, the criminal justice system, and ultimately society and government at large. Our policies ensure protection in every one of these areas, giving many layers of protection, in order to provide every opportunity for the best possible outcome. But we remain absolutely clear; that to fully resolve the root of all crime and dysfunction, parenting must be carried out correctly at all times. It is our ultimate goal to achieve this, and a reduction of crime to such a low level, that there is no need of a criminal justice system, or for prisons. See all the supporting policies below for a full explanation of how we will do this:

Wellbeing and cost benefits of this policy.

The costs savings of this policy are the total costs of the police service, currently £25billion per year, and the criminal judicial service which we cannot find figures for, but would estimate that it would be many £billions also. The wellbeing benefits are those associated with a far safer, more law abiding, and more just society.

Supporting policies.

Prison & Rehabilitation Policy

Parenting Policy

Supreme Law Policy

Education Policy