The loss of UK prisoners’ rights is the forgotten injustice of the Covid-19 crisis | Nick Cohen | The Guardian

During the pandemic, basic tenets of law are being further eroded in an already shambolic legal systemAt the start of the pandemic, any fool could see where the virus would strike. Any fool, that is, except the fool in Downing Street. “Few outsiders care about the care services,” I wrote on 4 April. “They are as neglected as the prisons, another Cinderella service that could be ravaged.” We were right about care homes becoming mortuaries, but the virus spared the prisons. Or, rather, it appeared to spare them. Instead of taking lives, it has taken liberties and made the practices of our criminal justice system resemble those of a police state.As always, the scandal is that there is no scandal. The Crown Prosecution Service shrugs its shoulders and our allegedly liberal judiciary sits on its hands as uncounted thousands are imprisoned without a court convicting them and ordered to stay in their cells 23 hours a day, with one shower a fortnight until… No one knows. Continue reading…

During the pandemic, basic tenets of law are being further eroded in an already shambolic legal system

At the start of the pandemic, any fool could see where the virus would strike. Any fool, that is, except the fool in Downing Street. “Few outsiders care about the care services,” I wrote on 4 April. “They are as neglected as the prisons, another Cinderella service that could be ravaged.” We were right about care homes becoming mortuaries, but the virus spared the prisons. Or, rather, it appeared to spare them. Instead of taking lives, it has taken liberties and made the practices of our criminal justice system resemble those of a police state.

As always, the scandal is that there is no scandal. The Crown Prosecution Service shrugs its shoulders and our allegedly liberal judiciary sits on its hands as uncounted thousands are imprisoned without a court convicting them and ordered to stay in their cells 23 hours a day, with one shower a fortnight until… No one knows.

Continue reading…