UK: Criminal Justice Act
01 November 1994
The movement of opposition to the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) gained rather than lost momentum after the coming into force of the Act's public order provisions at the beginning of November. By the end of the first month of operation anti-CJA groups were springing up and engaging in trespass campaigns all over the country, while senior police spokesmen were denouncing the provisions as "unenforceable" and discriminatory.
The existing law gave police powers to remove people and vehicles from land, and was used to split up convoys of over 12 vehicles. Under the Act, these powers are extended, and trespassing on land becomes an offence in various situations. Failure to leave after a lawful order is an offence, or returning to land once removed from it. Aggravated trespass - trespass which obstructs, disrupts, intimidates or deters lawful activity on land - is the offence hunt saboteurs can now be charged with, and by the last weekend in November 65 arrests for aggravated trespass had been made in hunts. The offence carries a maximum penalty of 3 months' prison and/or a fine of £2,500.
Saboteurs say that hunts are hiring security firms and using increased violence on them since the Act gave them the green light; they have been hospitalised in North Yorkshire, Northamptonshire and Sussex.
Mass trespass, or "trespassory assembly" occurs where a chief police officer obtains a banning order to prevent a gathering of more than 20 people on private land, to "prevent serious disruption to the life of the community" or "significant damage to land, buildings or monuments". The police can stop people or vehicles within a five-mile radius of such an assembly if they believe the people intend to defy a ban, and it is an offence not to obey. Organisers of a banned assembly face a maximum of 3 months and ?2,500 fine; participants can be fined up to £1,000.
Campaigners from the Freedom Network and the Criminal Injustice Act network began mass trespasses at road construction sites on the M11 in east London and the M77 in Scotland. Coalitions of anti-road protesters, squatters, new age travellers, ravers and others stalled eviction from a front-line road in east London for several days before leaving peacefully.
Protests
Other protests against the Act included a group invasion of the Folkestone home of Home Secretary Michael Howard. The group held a mock trial of his policies in his garden. Another group, Justice?, held a rooftop demo on the abandoned courthouse building in Brighton occupied by them for the past year after lying empty for five years. The Act will also criminalise squatting as "criminal trespass" if squatters stay for over 24 hours after being served with an interim possession order. These provisions, which also penalise returning to a repossessed squat, are expected to come into force within the next few months.
There has been strong criticism of the public order provisions from police. Police Federation chair Mike Bennett said they were unenforceable. "It appears to be legislation against a certain section of the population", he observed. "It's a recipe for disaster." Manchester's chief constable and ACPO public order spokesman David Wilmot, not known as a liberal, added that justice "must be seen to be fair and not to discriminate against particular groups in society". He warned that the wholesale criminalisation of caravan dwellers and travellers could lead to a cycle of urban and rural violence.
Child jails
The creation of five secure training centres or "child jails" for "persistent offenders" aged from 12 to 14, also provided for under the Act, came in for criticism from Sir John Smith, deputy Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis. He said that child jails "don't work". The idea that prison works to prevent crime was, he said, a non-starter, and should be seen only as a stop-gap until other alternatives were found.
His criticism was confirmed by a report on