Tuesday 20 April 2010

3 strikes law will . . . do something, says report

The Standard is aghast, “3 strikes law could increase murders – Nats’ secret official advice” screams the headline.

    _quote While they have been telling us that three strikes will reduce serious offending, the Government has been warned by its own officials that its three strikes policy may lead to people being murdered…”

Cue intemperate comments, blood-stained pictures on their front page and a nice public pat on the head by their  hero Mallard.

Murder! Secrets! Suppression!  It almost sounds like Ian Wishard has been let loose in the Sub-Standard’s editorial decision-making process.

Eric Crampton however has let facts intervene with the scare story.  A careful, rather than cursory, examination of the report would have shown … what do you think … that the more accurate headline would have been,

"Three strikes law could have increased murders among third strike offenders had they not changed the proposed legislation back in December, but now there's really nothing to worry about on that front so do carry on...".

Politics, as he says, remains the mind-killer.



1 comment:

Eric Crampton said...

It could be that there's nasty stuff in there; I can hardly claim to have given a careful reading to anything but the dozen or so pages that Labour's posted. But from what's posted it looks pretty benign.