The Daily Mail ('Tear up the sentencing guidelines and jail EVERY looter': Crackdown on looters revealed) reports an incautious statement in court by a JP, Novello Noades:
And indeed, as the Guardian discovered, emails were circulated to justices' clerks, telling themOur directive for anyone involved in the rioting is a custodial sentence. That is the directive we have had - it is a very serious matter.
...you should advise magistrates to commit to the crown court cases of commercial burglary, or handling … or violent disorder arising from the recent disturbances. There is a general acceptance that what occurred earlier this week is not covered by the sentencing guidelines and it will be very much the exception that such cases are sentenced in the magistrates courts...These emails were sent by a 'senior justices clerk' in the London regional office of Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service, that is to say, in effect, an official working for the Ministry of Justice, which was the body forced to release the emails in response to an FoI request. The reader is invited to consider how likely it is that this official produced these instructions on their own initiative and formulated them without guidance from higher up the political chain.
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