WHERE'S THE JUSTICE?

The increasing number of people held without trial in British prisons

Apr 22, 2025

The legal system in Britain is broken. As far as I am concerned, it was never a justice system anyway, but right now, if anyone still thinks it has anything to do with justice, then they have not really looked at it.

People are being held in prison way over the legal time limits without trial. This is not only in breach of the legislation concerned but it is also one hundred percent unlawful and a violation of the British constitution and rule of law.

As of December 2024 there were 17070 people on remand in England and Wales. Two thirds of these are, or were, prisoners who have not yet been to trial. The rest are prisoners who have not yet been sentenced. That will include people who have already served their sentence due to being on remand too long and therefore should have been released already. This number of remand prisoners is the highest figure in the last 50 years. Mostly these relate to either violent offences, drug offences or public order offences (with a few scapegoat nurses thrown in). Violent offences might sound bad but would include things like ‘common assault’ or ‘battery’ which under the law are minor misdemeanours. Common assault only requires a threat of violence and battery is any unwanted physical contact. So if you straighten someone’s tie and they complain , that counts as battery. So does hugging Chris Witty. Public order offences include anything that someone complains about in a public place. So for example I was convicted of a public order offence for throwing a piece of paper in the council offices.

The fact that some, or even most of these people held on remand will be guilty, and some of extreme violence, is not the issue here. The problem is, before trial, we cannot know which ones are guilty and which ones are innocent (and actually we don’t really know that after trial either, due to our wholly corrupt legal system) .

There are only about three clauses of the Magna Carta still considered law today. This forms part of the unwritten constitution of Britain. Holding prisoners on remand violates this law.

Clauses 39 and 40 of the 1215 charter are as follows :

“No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land”

“To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”

Although ‘freeman’ in King John’s day meant the barons, ie members of the nobility and some aristocracy, today the meaning applies to all men and women. There is alternative text to the 1297 statute which translates the word ‘him ‘ as ‘no great man or other’. England was a catholic country at the time King John created the Magna Carta, which was largely a reaffirmation of the coronation oath. Thus the pope had the power to annul the charter, which he did. It was later re-issued by King Henry III and eventually was written into the statute books in 1297 . where clauses 39/40 were assimilated into one, in clause 29.

So why is this relevant to remand prisoners?

‘no free man shall be seized , imprisoned, dispossessed ……. except by the lawful judgement of his peers ….’

Judgement of peers means a trial. However, even in the 13^th century juries were not really a new idea. This concept was already alive in europe and england used juries of presentment to decide whether accused persons should face The Ordeal. The Ordeal involved lovely god-fearing catholic priests using submersion in water (drown and you’re innocent, float and you’re guilty) or hot irons (if your burns don’t start healing after three days yer a wrong ‘un).

Shame the sewer rats who we call government today, don’t have to take an oath and face the Ordeal should they be shown to have broken it. I would be 100 percent pro bringing the ordeal back for those snivelling grey-suits.

Would love a Kofi

Removing somebody’s liberty without trial is unlawful. Remand prisoners should not exist. Of course the scumbags and lawyers have written legislation to legitimise the concept of remand which is actually a violation of the great principles laid out in clause 29 of the statute still in effect today.

Parliament set out their legislative powers in the Bail Act 1976 and the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 and created custody time limits under those powers in The Prosecution of Offences (Custody Time Limits ) Regulations 1987. Also The Criminal Procedure Rules , updated in 2020. The time limit for someone to be held on remand for an indictable offence was previously 112 days and for summary offences it was previously 8 days (Magistrates Court Act 1980), but these have now been increased to 182 days for indictable and 56 days for summary offences. For an either way offence the maximum period is currently 70 days. Yet people are being held way over these time limits. Some people in British prisons have been held without trial over a year or even several years which is way beyond what is legal. Lucy Letby was unlawfully and illegally held for 23 months before her trial.

Naturally, they have given themselves get-out clauses in their legalise so that they can extend the time limits at will. The excuses they have set out are illness, more than one offender involved in the offence or more than one offence and, predictably, ‘some other good and sufficient cause’ in order to approve applications for extension of time held. As a caveat they set out that remand prisoners cannot be held longer than the custody time limits unless the prosecution has acted with due diligence and expedition. This is just fudge of the most creamy variety. Expedition in this sense means speed. So in order to prove that it is okay to slow down the process (drag out the time) they must show that they have not slowed down the process??!!)

I wonder what excuse they used to hold Lucy Letby after the six months legal time limit was up then? Guess it was suitably chocolatey ‘good and sufficient cause’ like ‘saving babies at COCH’ even though she had long since ceased to work there. I think we know though, that the prosecution didn’t give a monkeys about ‘due diligence’ in her case. And now since her conviction, those of us who don’t buy the wicked witch narrative get endless diatribe directed at us from the likes of Dame Thirwall and other media spokesmen . This is very deliberate in that it goes along the lines of how questioning Lucy’s verdict is somehow a violation of the families of the babies concerned. But the establishment know full well that kind of argument is total nonsense and that we have every right to question whether there has been a miscarriage of justice and this is in no way disrespectful to anybody. This same kind of reasoning of claimed ‘disrespect’ could be used to stop you ever pointing out injustice. Lets say you worked in a care home and you saw an elderly person being beaten up by a colleague. The same reasoning would argue that you must not whistle blow because it would be disrespectful to your colleague or the managers of the home. What they are saying is, don’t point out injustice where you see it , because it might upset somebody. Lets all be wallflowers and allow abuse to continue for an easy life.

Regardless of whether they are right, wrong, both or neither, it is paramount that people have the guts to speak out at perceived cruelty or injustice. And in any case, there is no legal duty in this country towards victims. Police do not have to charge anybody just because a victim might want that. The victims have no say. Sometimes they are paid lip service, but it means nothing. There is a Victim Code but that is not enshrined in law. Many people have pushed for a Victim code to be enshrined in law but it never happens. Hence the legislative and executive do not give a toss about victims or their rights. So the idea that they would be concerned that those of us who question Lucy’s conviction are somehow upsetting the parents is total nonsense. If the government cared about people’s babies it would have closed down the neonatal unit of COCH long ago as it’s not fit for purpose.

The system is not designed to be there for individual victims. It is about maintaining law and order, or the appearance of same, in order to prevent societal breakdown. Ultimately the state legislates to protect its own interests. Anything else is just about appearances. Justice must be seen to be done.

There will be plenty of people who agree with the concept of remand. That people should be held before trial for as long as necessary in order to keep the victim and general public safe from the accused. But this misses the point. Few people would argue that someone who has, for example been accused of raping, strangling and murdering a woman in a dark alleyway, should be allowed bail. The point is that that person , once held , should be brought to court for trial without delay, because there is always the chance they could have got the wrong guy. Endlessly extending the times you can hold people without trial is purely for the convenience of lawyers and judges and has nothing to do with justice. Let’s face it, most of us (including myself) who have been victims of violent crime on multiple occasions, never see justice anyway. No one even gets arrested if the victim’s face doesn’t fit.

Because Magna Carta does not allow for people to be held at all prior to trial, the legislation setting out the custody time limits is a breach of British constitutional law (of which that clause of the Magna Carta is a very important part). Endless legislative gobbledegook continues to erode our ancient common law tradition and there are no signs that anything is going to reverse that.

My belief is that when a person is held for an unreasonable amount of time on remand or over the legal time limit, someone should invoke habeas corpus on their behalf to force the courts to allow them bail. Habeas corpus is a common law writ stemming from at least the middle ages but having even older roots and is still in effect today. It forces a person to be brought before the courts to justify their being held, or release them. Unfortunately I don’t think lawyers are using habeas corpus anywhere near enough and individuals themselves rarely know their rights and they are certainly not informed of them, apart from basic reading of rights when first arrested.

About twenty years ago, on some bad advice by a a lawyer, I pleaded guilty to a crime which I did not commit in order to get out. This is getting increasingly common. Too many remand prisoners are being advised by lawyers to plead guilty to crimes they have not committed just to get out. In my case I had been accused of assaulting one of my neighbours. But the truth was, this guy had hit me first and I had been defending myself. Yet I was the one charged because I was known to police and mental health services and was under a section 3 (but on leave from hospital) when the alleged crime happened. I was held on remand for two months in prison (unlawful anyway because I was under section) and then transferred for a further six weeks to PICU (psychiatric intensive care unit) on a section 37/41 (with no right to appeal). The lawyer suggested I pleaded guilty at my next court appearance in order to make sure I got out and did not have to go back to PICU. I wanted to get my dog back, so I pleaded guilty, which offence is still on my criminal record, yet I was merely defending myself against attack. It is illegal to send someone to prison when they are already sectioned under the Mental Health Act anyway.

The crime I did not commit is still on my record. And having a criminal record nowadays has severe consequences in that it hinders your ability to get a job , attend college, get housing etc. With that in mind, lawyers should not be advising innocent people to plead guilty, especially if evidence is flimsy.

While the courts and legal system continue to trash all over the concept of justice, there is a massive backlog waiting to be heard. But no worries. They always have plenty of time to swiftly prosecute and imprison people for wrong opinions on fakebook .

While I was viewing the current statistics on prison population, I came across the restricted patient data too. Seems that is continuing to grow. Are people getting more mad? Why is the government finding more excuses to lock people up?

I took part in a review of the mental health act because it was accepted that is was too draconian. That was around 15 years ago when they asked for people to report their experience of the ‘service’. They wasted all our time getting our reports and opinions and we had a day discussing the situation in which they paid lip service to the patients. Members of staff got a better hearing but none of it was actually implemented and as far as I can see, nothing has actually changed. If anything the situation has worsened. They then did another review in 2017/18 and a final report with more waffle. However I can see nothing about any action being taken to change anything

As of December 2023 there were 7,833 restricted patients. That means patients under section in hospital or conditionally discharged on a community treatment order (CTO). That is an increase of 17 percent since 2013. This doesn’t list the number of forensic patients held in prisons and although there seems to have been FOIs done on this, the ONS is claiming it does not know the number of forensic patients and instead directs any inquiries to NHS England.

All in all there is no access to real justice in Britain. All our institutions are riddled with corruption and no one in power can be trusted. Judges are appointed by the liars and cheats in government, and they too are liars and cheats, as are most lawyers. If you really want justice you have to DIY but remember the judges will side with the liars and cheats that make up the police force.

It is why I am an anarchist.

Essays on the Edge

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