Lack of Government Repsonse to Murder in Antigua

[voltr4m4x]

I am frankly apalled by the news of the initial lack of response by the British Government to allow British police to fly immediately to Antigua, at the request of the President of Antigua, in order to assist police there to bring the offender(s) to justice.

The lack of response by the British Government is twofold: (a) The Home Secretary, Jacquie Smith, was on holiday and she had requested not to be disturbed. Therefore a junior official at the Home Office took the decision to delay procedures on the advice of the Foreign Office, which is given at (b) below.
(b) The decision to send British police from Scotland Yard was delayed on account of the fact that Antigua enforces the death penalty, and it was felt that the British police should not be employed on cases where the death penalty is enforced.

The dithering by the British Government has meant that vital clues leading to a successful prosecution will almost certainly have been lost, and the offender(s) will once again have escaped from the justice which the family and friends of Catherine and Ben Mullany should rightly expect.

[flip_flop]

Population of Antigua - 80,000 (UN Estimate 2005)
Population of UK - 60,000,000

Alas my maths isn't up to the job of giving the murder rate as a percentage of population, but given that the murder rate in Antigua is 19 out of 80,000 compared to 765 out of 60,000,000, it strikes me you are more likely to be murdered in Antigua than the UK.

[jno]

the per-capita calculation isn't quite the point, flipflop, it's that UK police have more actual experience working on murders, so other countries think it makes sense to hire them. If they pay sufficiently then it's no skin off our noses. The UK government didn't have a 'lack of response', it's just that they didn't respond in the way some people wanted them to. It isn't Jacqui Smith's job to be available for Antiguan police requests day and night and on holiday, and perfectly in order for her to leave someone else to man the phones.

As the death penalty business, we should have a policy on this; if we haven't, it's time we got one.

[Gromit]

Thank you flip_flop for stating the bleedin obvious.

My post was about the availability and quantity of source material (murdered bodies) for learning forensic and detection skills. If you have 2 bodies a day, you will learn more that if you have less than 2 a month. You will also be able to devote more time, personnel, resources and money if the quantity you are dealing with is 40 times greater.

That is why we have the skills and the Antiguans do not, which was the answer to the question, why the British police are involved?

[anotheoldgit]

You just can't win flip_flop, even when you show up Gromit to be wrong again, one of his pals steps in to state:

the per-capita calculation isn't quite the point, flipflop,

[Gromit]

You just cannot win jno,

even when you explain it in very simple english, you get some dimbo who still misses the point.

[jno]

I tried to spell it out in words of less than one syllable, gromit, but it's mighty hard sometimes. It complicates matters that AOG has sworn never to mention me or respond to anything I say on his own threads, though I am of course the soul of reason, good manners and irrefutable logic.

[flip_flop]

Would you not agree Gromit that the first part of your answer, where you copy R1Geezer's description of Antigua, infers (or at the very least could be seen to infer) that you were drawing a parrallel between the numbers of murders in the UK compared to Antigua, as a way of demonstrating that Antigua is not, to use R1 Geezer's description, a foreign sh1th0l?

[sp1814]

I find myself in the eerie and entirely unpleasant position of having to disagree with Gromit whilst simultaneously having to concur with AOG.

Per capita, Antigua has more murders than the UK.

However, this is where I claw back from respectability. You can't extrapolate Antigua's figures then compare them to the UK. What would be much fairer, would be to compare Antigua's annual murder rate to, say, that of a comparable town or city in the UK.

Simple extrapolation masks social/economic drivers. You'd need to compare like for like.

If you compared Antigua to say, parts of the East End of London, South London, Manchester or Glasgow, I suspect we'd see our fine British murderers trouncing these upstart Antiguans.

We may not make much of a showing in the World Cup or the Olympics, but by gum, we lead the world in murder (Did you know that up until a couple of years ago, Nottingham was the murder capital of the UK?)

[Gromit]

sp1814

I ... have to disagree with Gromit ... Per capita, Antigua has more murders than the UK.

No disagreement sp1814, I never said it didn't.

[voltr4m4x]

Thanks for all your responses, folks. It's been most illuminating to read them all.

Actually, my Producer and I used the topic as part of my weekly four-hour stint on local radio yesterday (the Phone In slot) and the responses were also illuminating.

I am now about to close the post, so many thanks once again for having taken part.

[New Judge]

Whilst all these posts are fascinating, none of them has really addressed the original question.

They have said why British people should not go to Antigua (answers ranging from it being a hole full of excrement via dinners being too expensive to the airport closing early). They have also suggested that the UK police should not assist in the detection of crimes where UK citizens have been murdered abroad (mainly on the basis that we have enough murders here to be going on with).

Perhaps we might accept two things:

- that the UK police were asked to help.

- that such a request is reasonable if it helps bring murderers of UK victims to justice. (After all, we provide all sorts of support to many foreign countries for much less tenuous reasons than this).

So then, to the reasons for the delay.

I heard this matter (the delay) discussed long before it hit the press. The notion that capital punishment is still available in Antigua (though in practice virtually impossible to implement) most certainly was an issue for the Home Office and it caused much prevarication.

Even that it should be considered as a concern raises (in my mind) a much more disturbing issue:

At present we will not extradite anybody suspected of a crime to a country where they might be executed for that crime (fair enough some might say, others not).

Now, it is being debated whether we should even assist a country investigate a crime where UK citizens have been murdered because, if the perpetrators are apprehended, they may be executed.

In short, we don�t really want the murderers apprehended and certainly won�t assist in their apprehension because we believe that the punishment is too harsh.

So in whose best interest is this, the victims and their families, or the criminals? (And it can only be one or the other).

[jno]

New Judge, I think the answer is 'the nation's'. We have decided as a nation, for whatever reason, that execution is wrong. So is it right that we should try to catch criminals in order that they should face capital punishment?

Or you could substitute 'torture' or 'trial by ducking stool' or anything you like for capital punishment. Could we apprehend people knowing theat they might be burnt at the stake, or is it something we would prefer to have nothing to do with? Or - on similar grounds - should we be extraditing an alleged hacker to the USA, which is known to practise torture?

I said in an earlier post that we should have a clear government policy on this, if only to allow our police to make up their minds on these requests for help more quickly.

[New Judge]

So because of those principles we must be content to leave the killers of UK citizens at large just because they were murdered somewhere "less enlightened" than the UK.

Tell that to the families of the victims (because i would not like to).

[Quinlad]

I'd be quite happy to. And I don't quite see what's morally wrong with it. We're stepping into another jurisdiction to help which has potentially unpalatable consequences. You're suggesting we just gloss over that.

You can't find the guy, hand him in and walk off whistling while he's executed. And I have to say, if this was an issue remotely close to your heart, New Judge, you'd be one of the first to call the government hypocritical and lily-livered if they glossed over it too.

For me, the morality of state-sanctioned execution concerns me more than the feelings of a murder victim. However difficult it might be to sit them down and tell them.

If my granny asked me to help find her enagement ring after her naughty lodger had hidden it in her house. I'd be happy to help. If I found out that she was planning on gouging his eyes out with it before putting it back on, I might not be so keen. Is that me dsmissing the victim of a crime?