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Samizdata quote of the day I should have gone on hunger strike for longer than 44 days: then the bill would have been less.
– Former prisoner Vincent Hickey, on the Home Office’s bizarre attempts to charge him for board and food for the time he spent imprisoned for a murder he did not commit.
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This is the second article on this subject in the last couple of days. In all cases the wrongly accused individuals received compensation for the wrong conviction. Presumably this amount is thought to make them whole. If it does, then there is logic to charging room and board, just as they would have had to pay. If it isn’t felt that they are made entirely whole by the compensation, than the charge is unfair. In the end, one has look at the net amount and gather whether it rights the wrong conviction. It would make a lot more sense to net any such charge into an award in the first place and let the settlement between government accounts happen without presenting a bill to the freed individual.
But, in all cases, it should be noted that this compensation, just like all government expenditures, come from the treasury, which is the sum of the taxpayers’ pocketbooks. I think it is certainly good to try and balance the rights of the wrongly convicted person and the rights of the taxpayer. Justice isn’t necessarily always fair, and if it is felt that it is right that some provision be made from the treasury that it is reasonable in total.
Toolkein,
Sure, but then the circularity of the state’s argument would then hopefully be clarified: if it had not misarried justice in the first place, none of the room-and-board would have been owed it in the first place, so once the proper damages for being deprived of liberty are calculated, only then should this additional stuff be added to the final award so the state can pay itself back for the trouble. Hmmm…..
The state forced Mr. Hickey to use its room and board. He certainly never agreed to this arrangement, and in fact attempted to opt out. Ordinarily, one is not allowed to charge someone for goods and services unless they have agreed to pay, and if you continue to supply someone with goods or services that they have not asked for after they have attempted to opt out, you are deemed to have made a gift to them and may not later send them a bill.
The law on this actually pretty well developed, as common law dealing with magazine and newspaper subscriptions. The courts said that merely sending someone your publication unasked did not give you the right to collect a bill from them. Some courts indicated that you could send a bill if you had given the person the opportunity to opt out and they declined the opportunity. Certainly, a publisher was never allowed to collect for anything delivered after a recipient had asked that the publication not be sent to them.
The application of this principle to this case is pretty straightforward, really.
Even if one where to accept the state’s ascertion that they have saved their unwilling guests living expences this would still require another condition to be true. Namely, that being locked away did not in itself cause out of pocket expences, e.g. having to maintain a house on the outside without the income to support it, and I don’t think the state is entiled to any benefit of the doubt on this.
But how can 11 years of being wrongly imprisoned only be worth the £125,000.00 of compensation paid out to Michel O’Brien. That’s not even minimum pay!
I think the point is money is fundamentally about choice. If I am spending my own money, then I can use it to pay for goods and services, but I get to choose which goods and services. Yes, it is necessary for me to pay for a roof over my head and it is necessary for my to pay for food, but if I do so I get to choose where I live and what I have for dinner. If I am denied those choices, then I am denied most of the value of my money.
This is the essence of my objection to the large state, too. Even if the state was perfectly efficient and there was no damage done to the economy as a whole by taxation (let me laugh at length before going on) if my money is taxed from me and I receive it back in the form of “benefits” of some kind, then I am denied the choice as to how to use the fruits of my labour, and this denial of choice is wrong.
The application of this principle to this case is pretty straightforward, really.
With only one small difference, the publisher has already rebated back to you, say, 16 years worth of subscription fees, and simply asks to have back the subscription fees used.
I should point out, that here, like the other article the other day, I am playing more the role of devil’s advocate. At the core, I’m not sure that an award of any type is proper, and then of course billing someone for B&B would not have any logic to it at all.
In each of the cases above and in the other article/comments, the people let free were remunerated and presumably made whole (arguably), as if they were never jailed in the first place. Then, these folks who are trying to bill the unfortunate souls, see that those freed have been made whole, gross of cost of living expenses, instead of net, in other words the compensation awards themselves are gross of living expenses, presumably paid out by bureaucrat office A, and bureaucrat office B (e.g. Department of Corrections) is looking to balance its books and sees that bureaucrat A has made good to the wrongly convicted person gross and is merely looking for their offset. This all presumes the gross compensation is deemed fair in the first place, which from the wrongly convicted’s point of view, not likely. But I would still stress that, the State, which may be prone to err honestly, still has to make good for its error from the Public finances, and the amounts awarded, if any, should be reasonable. Paying out gross awards, then billing for B&B could simply be lazy, uncoordinated bookkeeping by State bureaucrats. I say, pay a net/fair amount of compensation (if that is what is wanted from a Public Policy standpoint) and leave the remuneration from one department (say justice) to another (corrections) happen as intergovernmental transfers. It really would save all concerned a lot of heart ache over the public relations issues.
But, one last notion, how would people fell about billing for B&B those are found not guilty based on a technicality? There is little doubt they are the criminal, but due to some civil liberty infringement, the evidence is inadmissible. They’ve spent X number of years in the clink, get out, demand a 300,000 pound award, which they get, and it is near certainty that they are the criminal? So they commit a crime, in real terms justly serve time, get out on a technicality, are awarded a rather huge some on the Public nickel. How would one feel about making an assessment from that ostensibly ill gotten gain? Compensated for committing a crime and having a minor infraction on their civil liberties? It might put the B&B issue in a different light with this example. But, again, even if the person is completely innocent, the notion is that they are made whole (gross) with an award, or at least I surmise this to be the logic on the part of those looking for B&B.
[…] how would people fell about billing for B&B those are found not guilty based on a technicality? There is little doubt they are the criminal, but due to some civil liberty infringement, the evidence is inadmissible.
I hope this is devil’s advocacy too… There are several embedded pernicious assumptions.
Because, unlike Mr Blunkett and the Home Office, our system of justice does not assume that those whom the state arraigns are guilty and the function of the courts is to process them efficiently. We require guilt to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. And the main reason for evidence rules is to avoid unreliable or untestable evidence being presented. In Britain, unlawful civil liberty infringement won’t automatically exclude evidence in every case. But it should: we are only protcted by the rule of law if the state is compelled to stick to the rules.
If someone “gets off on a technicality”–which is slightly different–then they are not guilty of the crime. Either what they did was not a crime, because the law does not prohibit what they did in the circumstances. Or the prosecution failed to prove against them every element of the offense, in which case we cannot know they are guilty.
In any sufficiently newsworthy case the police can nowadys be relied upon to say to the press they know the defendent was guilty but weasel lawyers got him off. To my mind this is contempt of court and they should remain silent, but what else would you expect them to say? “The whole thing has been a complete waste of public money.” “Our mistake was adding to the evidence and/or lying about it in court.” “Yes; we tried to prosecute the wrong man.” “Yes; we decided he was a criminal and tried to find an offence to fit.” “Our expert was talking rubbish, but the court should believe him anyway because it might be bad for his carees.” “No; it isn’t an offence to drive that way up that oneway street, but he’s a shifty character and might drive the other way if we let him get away with it this time.” …
I wonder how long it will be before convicted kidnappers start to sue their victims for food and board during their abduction? The principle would seem to be the same.
I wonder how long it will be before convicted kidnappers start to sue their victims for food and board during their abduction? The principle would seem to be the same.
1) A person that goes through a trial is much different than being kidnapped. I presume most of us could at least be classed minarchists, in which case that State is a desired entity carrying out a specific function (namely protection of our life and property), which in some cases may miscarry. A kidnapping is a the non-sanctioned use of force by one person over another.
2) Am I the only one who sees that the people involved here got large awards in compensation for the miscarriage of justice? The only way the make a kidnapper billing their victim similar to the wrongly convicted issue would be to also include the fact that the kidnapper having already paid a large sum in compensation already.
I can’t believe that I am actually in a position to at least see the State’s point of view on this (again as devil’s advocate). The whole premise seems to be that these bureaucrats want to take back some of the award, which presumably has made the person whole. That obviously can be debated, but it is ironic that most people here favor limited government and decry government waste etc, but are more than willing to move large amounts of public money around as recompensation as if it is coming out of a black hole. The money comes from the us, the people, one way or the other, ultimately. It is unfortunate that an innocent person’s liberty is taken, but as long as it is a as a result of the State performing its function, it is a risk we all ultimately share in (but that is also why it is essential that the scope of government and its powers be strictly defined and bounded). Hopefully it is a rare happenstance, especially with safeguards to prevent it are in place. But if there are to be awards, they certainly should be very reasonable IMO.
I see the point that it seems like a raw deal, but, again, no one seems to recognize that these folks were compensated. I guess I can’t really make more of the discussion until some opinion is expressed about what people think reasonable compensation is. If some think that, on average, the compensation is too little, then a billing would add insult to injury. If others think that the compensation is too much, then some argument could be made that some offset should occur.
In the very first example a few days back, the wrongly convicted person was awared 960,000 pounds after serving 16 years. That’s about $1.7 million dollars (at current conversion) or $109,200 for every year. To me that’s a lot of money, all coming from the taxpayer’s pockets. The median income in the state of WI is about $30,000 per year (as an example). I think there’s a lot of difference between $30,000 and $109,200, and the awards will ultimately come from such folks in the form of taxes. If nothing else I’m simply trying to view the whole shootin’ match in terms of what is fiscally responsible. If awards are 3 times the average income, coming out of the taxpayer’s pockets, I don’t know if its too outside the realm of decency to match the award to a reasonable scale. If it is unreasonable, one might be tempted to look at the expenses already spent on the Public nickel. A runaway award system has the feel of a warm fuzzy about it.
I do see that presenting a bill seems a cold way to go about it, it would make much more sense to try and limit the awards to something reasonable, perhaps the median income of the general area, less the tax effect, times the number of years served, and forget about the boarding costs and calling it even. That seems reasonable to me. In the case of the example above, assuming the State of WI, that would probably be about $26,000 per year after a tax effect, times 16, or $416,000, instead of $1.7 million. I certainly wouldn’t get too misty over someone having to come up with the $88,000 for the B&B bill from the ~$1.3 million differential. Most people work their entire lives and never will see anything approaching this kind of money.
Toolkien,
If the awards are too high, then they should be limited.
That is a very different proposition to the government welching on its obligations.
As far as the comparison with the kidnapper – the kidnapper is forced to pay with his liberty, rather than his money. I think the comparison stands.