Prisons, probation and the press under examination

12/03/2008

On 10 March 2008 Lord Chancellor Jack Straw gave a speech to the Guardian Criminal Justice Summit on prisons, probation and the press. He spoke on a topic that is familiar to judges and legal practitioners alike here in Australia: media reporting of crime and the effect which it has upon the criminal justice system.

He noted that reporting of crime is different from other subjects. He said:

"We may be pleased when we wake by the sense - if true - that one's children are getting a better deal at school, or it's a lot easier to get a hospital appointment, but very few, I think, will wake with some sense of gratitude that they had not been the victim of crime the night before.

Crime is something which in an orderly society people expect to do without. And where someone is the victim of crime, it's insulting and insensitive for politicians to tell them that their chances of being a victim had been less than they were. They are 100% a victim, whatever the chances.

The problem, however, for both politicians and the media is that whilst crime is bound to be felt at an individual level, the success or failure of government, law enforcement, the criminal justice system and of communities themselves in making people safer from crime has to be measured in aggregate."

View the full text of the lord chancellor's speech>

**12 March 2008 **