I was wondering what on earth to write about this morning when I received a news flash from the RCIPS that is published on Breaking News: “Man charged with several serious offences, in GT court Wed (16)”.

The man is alleged to have committed burglary, attempted burglary, threatening to kill a police officer, threatening to cause serious harm to police officers and an electronic monitoring officer, careless driving and leaving the scene of an accident!

All this whilst he was out on bail from the court!

I described this as a ‘real life hopeless case”.

So I went online to see what there is to learn about hopeless cases and if there such a thing as a hopeless case.

What I found actually had nothing to do with habitual offenders who commit crime after crime even when given a chance or more than one chance to redeem. I wanted to know if it was some illness they have. Instead the hopeless cases I read on the Internet were police cases against the accused that appeared hopeless for the accused to fight! A huge difference but very interesting nevertheless.

On the Law Information website it states (and we are talking about the USA not Cayman Islands):

“Admittedly, these are tough times for anybody who has the misfortune to be accused of a crime. Today no one seems to care about the rights of the accused – constitutional or otherwise. The present generation seems to be a throwback to the days of the Old West. Merely to be accused is to be presumed guilty. The old mantra from the days of the Gold Rush has been revived. “Let’s string ‘em up!” “Let’s put ‘em away!”
“There are more than two million people presently incarcerated in the United States today. More than in Russia, China or any other country in the world! We can’t seem to build prisons fast enough to hold them all. Nor, in the public’s view, does it seem, that any prison sentence is long enough! We keep sentencing people to longer and longer terms. “Three Strikes” is now deemed too lenient. Increasingly, we are moving to “One Strike” laws!
“Even more frightening is willingness of our courts to, not simply to tolerate but, actually approve of the police lying, cheating, planting evidence. In the wake of 9-11, we are now beginning to learn of the existence of “secret courts” that meet in secret – who knows where – to authorize the F.B.I., and other law enforcement agencies, to take actions that, up until now, were always considered to be clearly unconstitutional and unthinkable in any democratic society.
“No wonder that, if you are accused of committing a crime today, you may feel that your case is hopeless. That you have no chance. No wonder that so many people just like you – nine out of ten – merely “roll”, ie. roll over and plead guilty to whatever the police happen to charge them with. No questions asked.
“Fundamental constitutional principles like the presumption of innocence, the government having the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the right against self-incrimination: all seem to be antiquated, and wholly irrelevant, ideas in today’s criminal justice system.
“No wonder you may be making the mistake of assuming that you are guilty as charged. No wonder you may think, “I did a particular act, therefore, I must be guilty of what the police, the District Attorney, say I am.”
Have you stopped to think that may not be so? Do you understand that merely because you may have committed a particular deed, does not necessarily mean that you are legally guilty of the crime you are charged with? Do you realize that, even if you committed a crime, it may not necessarily be the crime you are charged with?
“Are you aware that prosecutors routinely, and almost always, grossly over-charge offenses? Do you understand, and appreciate, that while an act is a fact, whether that act constitutes a particular crime is often a matter of opinion – about which reasonable people (even judges and lawyers) may differ?
SOURCE: http://lawinformation.net/criminal2.html

I have to agree with the statement, “Are you aware that prosecutors routinely, and almost always, grossly over-charge offenses. I have often seen that happening here in the Cayman Islands. Pile in as many as you can and the judge might be swayed that this man deserves at least one of the charges to be rendered “Guilty”. I presume that is the reason.

The best source I eventually found to answer my real question was from a BBC news article “Why one criminal stopped offending” at: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22587188

“For most of his life, Roy Munday says, he was at war with authority.
An armed robber, a drug dealer and a man who beat people up for money, he spent a total of 17 years in prison.
He said that at one time he was deemed so violent he came close to being kicked out of the mainstream prison system and sent to Broadmoor high-security hospital.
But today, Munday is a family man and a university graduate. Now 45 years old, he’s still physically imposing but is trying to use his mistakes to help others.
He is currently a volunteer with the St Giles Trust, a charity that uses ex-offenders to try to help recently released prisoners so they can avoid going back to jail.”

And there is the key. “A charity that uses ex-offenders to try to help recently released prisoners so they can avoid going back to jail.”

The article makes these very important points:

“Munday says he and other ex-offenders can make a difference, but it is important for prisoners like the young man who missed his appointments to need to “want to help themselves”.
No one method of rehabilitation has ever been proved to completely eradicate reoffending in any country.
Munday said the wake-up call for him was when a prison officer who knew him as a young man heard he was going to be transferred from Wormwood Scrubs to Broadmoor.
He offered him the option of entering the therapeutic unit for violent offenders at Wormwood Scrubs rather than going to Broadmoor.
“It made me sit there and think that at 15 years old I was in a position where no school wanted to take me, and then I was in the same situation in the prison system.
“It looked like in that 20-year period, absolutely nothing’s changed in my life. It’s just got progressively worse and I’ve progressed to this point where I am such a bad person that even the prisons can’t handle me.”
‘Stake in society’
The two years he spent in intensive group therapy helped him confront the abuse he suffered in childhood and start making changes in his life.
He started working for qualifications in the prison gym and, for the first time, imagined a life without crime.
Towards the end of his sentence as an open prisoner, he was able to complete a degree in sport and exercise science.
He was finally released in 2004 after serving more than 10 years for armed robbery, possession of a firearm and intimidation of witnesses.
But he had to find his own accommodation on his first night out of prison with no help from anyone.
That many prisoners leave with only £46 in their pocket and nowhere to go is one of the reasons Munday cites for prisoners turning back to crime.
“Make sure they’ve got somewhere to go when they are actually released, deal with it whilst they are still in prison, get their benefits while they are still in prison, because you’ve got people walking out the gate – they’ve got nowhere to go.
“They are being set up to fail straight away,” he said.

So Munday has answered my question. There can never be “hopeless cases”. But they have to have help. And there is almost no help here.

Yesterday I highlighted the case for prevention and asking the question why do we spend far more money on putting the cart in front of the horse.

Now we seem to spend no money on the cart when it eventually emerges from its garage. We abandon it until it will eventually go back.

Until we realise we must have something set up here like the UK’s St Giles Trust operated by previous offenders and well supported by money then we will have more and more “hopeless cases”.