Mind Crime
Posted: Fri 18 September, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, General, News, Thoughts 4 Comments »Over the last week or so, I’ve been churning this post around in my head – and it’s still a work in progress. I’ve written about it before on a couple of occasions, but in the last ten days there have been two big – and well-publicised – court cases based around conspiracies, and planning to commit offences.
In one case, two boys in Manchester were supposedly planning to blow up their school – and have now been found innocent of all charges, and there’s a small ruckus going on about whether the entire thing was actually a total waste of time and money. The second one (although it actually came first chronologically) was of course the ‘liquid bomb’ plot to detonate bombs in mid-air on several flights. They were found guilty, and this week got sentenced to incredibly long terms ( between 32 and 40 years each)
Now I can’t deny, I find I have a real problem with people going to court to answer a case that they were thinking about doing something bad.
Obviously, I haven’t been in the court hearings on either case, so I don’t know the true weight of evidence in either case. I just find myself uncomfortable with the concept of having people get taken to court and going through epic legal proceedings for an offence that has been talked about, but not actually committed.
Mind you, in my opinion terrorism is the ‘child porn’ of the 2000s, it’s the Big Bad Thing where people appear to say “Oh, well if [the accused] was into that then they’re beyond the pale, just lock ’em up and throw away the key”. It’s the “Ultimate Offence”, or whatever.
I suppose that the difference between the cases is that with the aeroplane bomb plan the people had actually put together the things they needed, whereas the Manchester one appears to have been more about talk and ‘let’s do that’ discussions, rather than serious preparation.
Even with that though – and I totally acknowledge the difference between ‘planning’ and ‘making the things necessary in preparation’ – I keep coming back to the entire concept of being able to be tried for an offence that hasn’t actually been committed. After all, isn’t that pretty much what Orwell described in “1984” as “Mindcrime”?
But the only way round this though is surely to let the crime happen and then arrest them. If it was then discovered that the police/security forces knew about it in advance then all hell would be let loose. Not sure what the ideal answer is other than terrorists deciding not to bother anymore.
Loathe as I am to be picky but no, it isn’t – Orwell’s term was “thoughtcrime”. While the collection of materials was the key in the plane bomb case, proving that the conspirators were serious, given the fact that many explosives can supposedly be made from household goods then surely most of the country could be argued to have already gathered the necessary materials to make a similar attack. Perhaps we should all surrender ourselves at our local police station to save the taxpayer the expense of an investigation.
Sorry, I must’ve misremembered it as “MindCrime”.
As for being picky, no worries at all – I’d rather be corrected than wrong. 🙂
I think it’s a well-established judicial principle. That’s why we have offences such as conspiracy to murder and being an accomplice before or after the after the crime.
I agree that we don’t want a situation of locking people up merely for thinking, and I don’t think in general that ‘corresponding’ should be a criminal act in itself.
But it seems that each case has been judged on its merits. There’s a part of me that thinks that no case should go to court unless it is guaranteed to get a guilty verdict. OTOH, there is merit in examining grey areas via judicial process.
I think maybe the Bowling for Audenshaw case raises questions about the extent to which the Press should name names in ongoing trials whilst discharging their obligation to ensure that justice is transparent and thus accountable.