The combined effect of less accurate, but increasingly relied-on technical evidence, the abolition of the right to silence and the uneven duties of disclosure on defence and prosecution make more wrongful convictions a certainty. The chances of an acquittal for black suspects are far below those for white suspects, but are nevertheless far higher when they go for jury trial than when they are tried by magistrates in summary trial. But now, Michael Howard has revived the discredited proposal of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice to remove the right of defendants to elect jury trial for a wide range of offences, including theft, burglary, moderately serious assaults, possession of drugs and low-value criminal damage. As the chairman of the Bar Council said in 1993, when the proposal was mooted by the RCCJ, if magistrates have the power to order summary trial, 'unequal treatment of defendants' will result, 'favouring those whom society views as more respectable than others'. In other words, magistrates would allow white middle-class defendants to have a jury trial for a minor theft, but not a black unemployed defendant.
Rehabilitation is out, 'lock em up and throw away the key' is in.
Already the incarceration rate for black people is nearly ten times the rate for white people, at over 1000 per 100000 of population compared with 135 per 100000. Howard's sentencing laws, opposed by virtually all senior judges and voted down in the House of Lords, would exacerbate this trend. Other repeat offenders such as burglars will also get long minimum sentences, and there will be no remission for good behaviour or parole. Labour abstained in the Commons on a measure which is expected to increase the prison population by another 12000. The Lords won a measure of discretion back for sentencing judges, but the Bill's main provisions survived.