Because We're Ruled By Ghastly Shits, That's Why

Guy Fawkes was honest in his intentions at least

Andrew Malkinson has been badly done by. Very badly done by.

I was wrongly imprisoned for 17 years. Then the state released me into a legal maze

Andrew Malkinson

Nine months after a court quashed my conviction, I’m living on universal credit. Why is it so hard for victims like me to get compensation?

I do not know any of the details of the conviction, the exoneration and do not care to do so. For the only important point to make here is that the system, at the end, agreed that it made a mistake. Whether that’s a mistake of the process, the procedure, getting the wrong person, just one of those fucks ups, matters not. There was, in that system, a mistake, a man then lost 17 years of his life as a result.

Then the bloke gets fucked about because we’re ruled by ghastly shits:

There is a statutory scheme to compensate victims of miscarriages of justice in the UK. In fact, the UK has had some sort of compensation scheme for decades. But nine months after the court overturned my 2004 conviction for a stranger rape, I am still living on £363.74 a month in universal credit. I have counselling once a week from a charity because the NHS said I would have to wait five months to get help – and because I took up the offer from the charity, I have been removed from the NHS waiting list. I am no longer homeless, but that is because I was finally offered housing by the local council, paid for with housing benefit – not because the justice system recognised any duty to support me in the months after my exoneration.

I am currently paying back the state £5 a month, for what it considered an overpayment of universal credit when I left the country for more than 28 days to fulfil my long-held dream of travel. Out of what the Guardian pays me for this article, the state will claw back 55 pence in the pound. I have to attend fortnightly “job coaching” sessions for jobs I cannot do because of my mental ill-health – but if I could manage a job, I would lose the legal aid funding I need to pursue a civil claim against those responsible for what happened to me.

Fuck them, the horse they rode in on and come back and do it again tomorrow. And yesterday.

At the moment, I am encountering nothing but barriers. This is because the lawmakers who redesigned the “compensation” system in 2014 did so as if they were labouring under the delusion that the state was somehow being consistently ripped off by prisoners whose convictions had been quashed.

It’s not just then.

I asked the MoJ to raise the £1m cap on compensation, which has not increased with inflation since it was first introduced in December 2008, but it has so far refused.

Ghastly, horrendous, vile little shits.

One of the first pieces I wrote for the British press was on this very subject:

CHARLES CLARKE’S announcement that he is limiting the compensation available to those wrongfully imprisoned has been met with the hoots of derision it deserves. What is more important to work out is why the Home Secretary made such a lunatic decision in the first place.

The proffered reason, to save £5 million a year, is simply beyond satire. The Government, in its infinite wisdom, annually disposes of about £500 billion of the nation’s production: denying those innocents unjustly banged up will save some 0.001 per cent of public expenditure. Just to provide some context, the £5 million saving is less than the £5.7 million spent in 2003 on subsidising the swill bins at the Houses of Parliament. No, it can’t be about the money.

18 years ago that was.

The mark of a liberal society is that more care and attention is paid to those innocents wrongly found guilty, than to the guilty who escape justice. Any criminal justice system designed and run by fallible human beings will make mistakes. The important thing is how we react when a miscarriage of justice occurs. Shamefully, under the Home Secretary’s proposals those who find their guilty verdict overturned at their first appeal will have no right to compensation. For others compensation will be capped at £500,000.

We were ruled by shits then and are ruled by shits now.

Whatever the motivations for this decision they do not change the fact that it is a disgrace. Just as mother always said: you make a mistake, you apologise, make what amends you can and promise not to do it again. When the State makes a mistake and steals someone’s liberty it is indeed our duty, to compensate those wronged. Whether the Home Secretary is ignorant of this moral fact, or simply wishes to ignore it for other reasons, it is appalling. Shame on you, Mr Clarke, shame on you.

Just give the guy a blank cheque and say sorry. Anything else is the act of a ghastly, ghastly, little shit - or moral fuckwit.

But then that’s who we’re ruled by, isn’t it?

Fuck ‘em, fuck ‘em right rigid.