Rifle through the belongings of any senior staffer on Hillary or Obama’s campaign you’ll probably find a well-thumbed copy of George Lakoff’s ‘Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know your Values and Frame the Debate’. Published almost a couple of years ago now it quickly acquired ‘must read’ status and became the closest thing the Democrats had to a campaign Bible. It’s main theme is the importance of framing in political debate and how winning any argument depends at least partly on understanding how frames work and using them properly. The current debate around Government plans for extending pre-trial detention illustrates this quite well.
Listen to any government Minister thrust forward to defend these plans and they essentially use the same frame every time – ‘The threat is increasingly complex – only these measures will protect the public’. Accept that frame and it becomes all but impossible oppose the plans without leaving yourself vulnerable to the charge that you’re ‘soft on terror’ or negligent with public safety. The debate is marooned on hypotheticals – anecdotal examples of suspects or investigations that might fall flat if the police don’t have enough time to question people. It’s all but impossible to win any ground here because the focus is so nebulous. Whether the government have consciously constructed this frame to help advance their case hardly matters – the point is it works.
And let’s be honest – it works because on one level the government do have a point. If we give the police longer to investigate terrorist suspects then logic tells you that in some cases or at some point this will let them prosecute someone who would otherwise go free to commit atrocities. The key then is to destroy that frame and explain that the root of most peoples objections to these plans isn’t their efficacy but the fact that they disrupt the balance between liberty and security to an unacceptable degree. A national curfew at 2100 for all adults would undoubtedly see a dramatic reduction in street crime but that’s not the point – most people are want a sense of balance in these things and will happily live with the nominally increased risk in exchange for the commensurate freedoms. The same thing applies with regard to pre-trial detention – yes, it may well be the case at some point with a particular suspect we let them go on day 28 and they go on to commit some terrible crime but that’s a risk most of us understand and are happy to take. Set the threshold at 42 days and you don’t solve that problem – you just change the parameters and perhaps catch a few more of those already rare cases and the succeed / fail boundary just sits at 42/43 days instead.
The whole thing is about balance and there’s absolutely no evidence that that balance needs to be altered in the favour of the police
Listen to any government Minister thrust forward to defend these plans and they essentially use the same frame every time – ‘The threat is increasingly complex – only these measures will protect the public’. Accept that frame and it becomes all but impossible oppose the plans without leaving yourself vulnerable to the charge that you’re ‘soft on terror’ or negligent with public safety. The debate is marooned on hypotheticals – anecdotal examples of suspects or investigations that might fall flat if the police don’t have enough time to question people. It’s all but impossible to win any ground here because the focus is so nebulous. Whether the government have consciously constructed this frame to help advance their case hardly matters – the point is it works.
And let’s be honest – it works because on one level the government do have a point. If we give the police longer to investigate terrorist suspects then logic tells you that in some cases or at some point this will let them prosecute someone who would otherwise go free to commit atrocities. The key then is to destroy that frame and explain that the root of most peoples objections to these plans isn’t their efficacy but the fact that they disrupt the balance between liberty and security to an unacceptable degree. A national curfew at 2100 for all adults would undoubtedly see a dramatic reduction in street crime but that’s not the point – most people are want a sense of balance in these things and will happily live with the nominally increased risk in exchange for the commensurate freedoms. The same thing applies with regard to pre-trial detention – yes, it may well be the case at some point with a particular suspect we let them go on day 28 and they go on to commit some terrible crime but that’s a risk most of us understand and are happy to take. Set the threshold at 42 days and you don’t solve that problem – you just change the parameters and perhaps catch a few more of those already rare cases and the succeed / fail boundary just sits at 42/43 days instead.
The whole thing is about balance and there’s absolutely no evidence that that balance needs to be altered in the favour of the police
3 Comments:
I'm in the process of preparing just such a point, exp. the curfew analogy and will quote you instead. This post sums it up beautifully.
Now done.
It's not the sort of thing where you are ever going to get evidence to support a particular number of days limit. The nature of these cases is that we are unlikely to see all the evidence which is available, so how on earth can we make a judgement as to what is sensible. And I suspect the public's opinion would change dramatically if someone who was realeased after 28 days went onto commit a major atrocity. The fact that it hasn't happened yet does not mean that it is not possible - and I for one don't have the foggiest of what the probabilities might be. All we are ever likely to ever get is the police saying that having seen the intricacies of such cases and that they can see circumstances where 42 days might be appropriate.
I also have a worry that 28 days may becomes the norm rather than the limit - and that some cases are not cleared up as quickly as they should be - just so the police can be on the safe side by not having to hurry their investigations.
I think that we also have a problem that in UK Law that it is not possible to introduce new evidence after the suspect has been charged - this isn't the case in much of Europe, so that you can have the situation where someone is charged relatively quickly but can then sit in prison for up to 2 years waiting for the case to be developed and brought to court, which in my eyes at least would appear to be an even greater abuse of human rights. But it does point out that in those countries the investigators do need a long period in order to put together a case which will stand up in court - unless we make the assumption that they are particularly malevolent.
Perhaps what we need is a relatively short limit where the police can carry out unencumbered investigations, but then have a process where variable extensions can be granted by a judge(s)(or even some independent jurors) based on the quality of the evidence which is presented in camera to that judge
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