The Hun's angle?
His compensation bid angered victims and led to calls for violent criminals to be barred from seeking compensation for jail attacks.
Unfortunately for Hun hack Peter Mickelburough, he couldn't actually back that up by finding anyone who actually HAD issued one such call (let alone calls plural).
[INSERT NON-EXISTENT IMAGE OF PETER MICKELBUROUGH HERE (Why aren't there photos of News Ltd Hacks on the web?)]
Peter: I heard a voice in my head, okay? Or it might have been my editor.
In fact, both major parties resisted the prompting to promise a ban on prisoners' right to sue, the minister sensibly suggesting it was up to the court to determine the merits of the claim and the shadow minister suggesting victims' compensation should be more generous:
"While victims have a right to compensation . . . the damages that are awarded seem to be out of kilter with what would be awarded if you sued. I would be happy to explore ways to ensure they got some degree of entitlement to be compensated for the loss they have sustained as a result of the crimes."
[Liberal corrections spokesman] Mr McIntosh said it would be a big step to take away the rights of prisoners to sue.
Is that Liberal Party policy now? Good for them if it is. I agree that the compensation for victims of crime at the moment is pathetic. As the Hun notes angrily, the police officer received $1000 for an injury which continues three years later. Adding insult, in fact. However, Peter "I hear calls in my head" Mickelburough doesn't seem so concerned with reporting calls to increase compensation for victims - just on turning victims who happen to be prisoners into non-people.
In fact, the only quote that our hack could find even close to his main contention was from the police officer victim, who was unsympethatic -
"Jail is a dangerous place isn't it?" Sgt Scott said, when told of the claim.
Actually, understandable though Scott's frustration with the system might be, that's a fairly outrageous attitude for a police officer to have. To imply that laws are regularly broken in jails and that this is in some way okay.
Jails shouldn't be dangerous places. They should be the most tightly-regulated facilities the state runs, since it has complete and total control over the prisoners' movements, possessions, and so on. How is it anything other than scandalous that prisoners can be stabbed in the neck whilst in custody? How are they getting knives? How is that okay?
It's as disturbing as the often-expressed approval for the idea that prisoners are raped in custody. It's an attitude borne of the most base human motives: revenge, and hate of "the other". The first idea is that they're bad people and deserve bad things to happen to them in return - not just the punishment the state metes out, but whatever any even sicker bastard feels like imposing off their own bat. The second is that they're bad people NOT LIKE ME, so why should I care if something bad happens to them? The notion that once someone's done something bad we shouldn't care whatever happens to them ever again is borne of a disturbing antipathy to other human beings. It's open season. You committed a robbery? Well, it's a decade of brutal rapings for you.
Except that brutal rapings are NOT part of the way a civilised community punishes offenders. A person sentenced to five years in prison for a robbery is not sentenced to state-sanctioned rape or neck-stabbings; they're sentenced to five years of loss of liberty. What would it say about us as a society if we stopped being two-faced about it and declared that yes, you were being sentenced to regular daily rapings by the state? (Officially-endorsed prison rapist: there's an interesting job title.) So why is it okay for us just to accept that it goes on, whilst pretending when convenient that it's not our responsibility?
(Further thought: if you treat "bad" people as permanently less than human beings, people with no rights, you encourage them to think of themselves as separate too. And you thereby make rehabilitation ever more unlikely. When those prisoners are eventually released, do you think they're going to settle back into the community, or do you think they're more likely to commit further offences on further victims?)
Anyway, the Hun has put up a voteline poll on whether prisoners should be allowed to sue. Will the vote be "of course they can; wrongdoing is wrongdoing no matter who the victim happens to be"? Or will it be "they're bad people and I hate them and if they want to do something then I want them not to be able to do it"?*
Fifty bucks says I can predict the outcome.
*This line was also the thinking behind the "let's take the dole away from drug users" story elsewhere in the paper.
