Guilt and Innocence

Moral Maze

BBC

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.5 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2018

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hampshire Police are giving leaflets to suspected sexual predators, explaining the law to them and asking for their behaviour to stop. The "C5 notices" are used when there is not enough evidence to support a prosecution. Supporters of the scheme say it’s another way to prevent sexual crime and protect children. Critics say there’s no evidence it changes anyone’s behaviour and it risks stigmatising the innocent. Where does this leave the principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law? Is this non-negotiable or can there be a place for pre-emptive justice? The question is more pressing in the age of social media. While public naming and shaming can give victims the confidence to come forward and talk to the police, it can also risk creating the assumption of lifelong guilt for those who are accused but have never been convicted. Some say the new social dynamics have changed our culture and behaviour for the better; others make the historic comparison to witch hunts and pillories. This applies to all kinds of behaviour, not just the criminal. When an individual’s every past teenage misdemeanour is a matter of public record, from an ill-advised selfie to a casually racist tweet, how should they be treated in adult life? Have we lost the capacity to forgive? If justice is a combination of punishment and rehabilitation, how should we strike that balance? Witnesses are: Jamie Bartlett, Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at the think-tank Demos; Dr Marian Duggan, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Kent; Michael Lane, Police and Crime Commissioner for Hampshire; and Corey Stoughton, Acting Director of Liberty.

Producer: Dan Tierney

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4.
0:05.3	Good evening, Justice, in Hampshire at least, is no longer a binary matter of guilty or not guilty.
0:11.0	Police there don't have to prove people suspected of sexual offences had actually committed them before taking action.
0:17.7	When they can't find enough evidence to prosecute, they send them a pro-former letter,
0:22.4	spelling out the law and telling them to change their behaviour. This will show up in many of the
0:27.7	background checks now required for a wide range of jobs. The pilot scheme's supporters say it'll
0:33.4	protect the vulnerable. Critics say it blows a big hole in the basic principle of English law,
0:39.1	innocent until proved guilty, and according to one police commissioner, won't protect a soul.
0:44.8	In this unforgiving social media age, the presumption of guilt has become lifelong. The public
0:49.6	record is indelible and everlasting. People are not just named and shamed, but stained forever by the new social dynamics,
0:57.4	which reach out sometimes beyond the law to condemn behaviour now regarded as unacceptable.
1:02.8	Not just convicted criminals, those merely suspected, the targets of the hashtag Me Too movement,
1:08.5	now almost exactly a year old, or the prominent whose teenage
1:12.2	misdemeanors have returned to haunt them. The past, as the novelist Zadie Smith put it,
1:17.1	has become the present. If justice is about proof, punishment and forgiveness, are we being
1:23.2	just? That's our moral maze tonight. Our panel, Melanie Phillips, social commentator on the Times.
1:28.6	Claire Fox from the Academy of Ideas, and McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist and the chief
1:32.8	executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor. Claire Fox, does this worry you?
1:37.7	Scares a life out of me. I've long, I've been concerned over the last couple of years that
1:43.2	innocent until proven guilty is being treated with glibbed indifference, particularly in I've been concerned over the last couple of years that Innocent until Proven Guilty
1:44.8	has been treated with glibbed indifference
1:47.2	particularly in relation to things like hashtag Me Too
	...

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