Simon Jenkins points out the inappropriateness of the custodial sentence handed down to Auriol Grey (A tragic accident should not have landed Auriol Grey in prison. The UK justice system is stuck in the dark ages, 28 March). That Grey should have been held solely responsible for the death of a cyclist using the pavement is a travesty of justice. Grey was visually and cognitively impaired and, as a consequence, only dimly perceived a threat and overreacted to a fear for her own safety. That the judge failed to understand those mitigating circumstances is regrettable.
The local authority was unable to ascertain whether the walkway was a shared facility for pedestrians and cyclists. But even if it had been a shared-use path, there is a duty on both parties to use it safely. When the Department for Transport first proposed the introduction of shared-use paths, blind and visually impaired people made strenuous objections. The first involved signage: a visually impaired or blind person would not be able to see this. The second involved the acceptance that a cyclist was effectively silent, so a blind person could not determine a cyclist’s approach.
I supported those objections, which the DoT later dismissed. It must be held partly responsible for creating the conditions that led to this tragedy; Grey herself should not be held responsible, on the grounds of her dual impairments.
Dr Allan Dodds
Ex-director, Blind Mobility Research Unit, University of Nottingham
Simon Jenkins correctly suggests that the culture of imprisonment is endemic in the British legal system, and we have, as a country, paid heavily for that. However, in my years as a magistrate, much was done to encourage sentencing benches to avoid sending defendants to prison without extremely good reason. We were expected to consider the advantages of alternative community sentencing, of which there are many for both defendants and society.
My experience of working with the probation service produced many success stories. The bench and probation service regularly gave joint presentations to groups such as Rotary clubs and schools, and almost always the audiences changed their views on the benefits of community punishments over imprisonment. The government’s “new” idea of community orders for minor offences is of course nothing new. But it will never work unless there is a considerable increase in probation and judicial funding.
Julian Black
Shepton Beauchamp, Somerset
Simon Jenkins’ assertion that we are obsessed with imprisonment as the best way to deal with offending resonates with my experience of working in a young offender institution. On retirement, I was involved in facilitating restorative justice as a volunteer. Prison does change lives – sadly for the worse. And the cost of keeping one young person in jail exceeds the annual salary of a police officer, teacher, social worker, community worker or mental health professional. Why not use some of the horrendous cost of running overcrowded prisons to prevent people falling into a criminal lifestyle?
Rightwing politicians and the rightwing press keep making the same cruel statements about how best to respond to crime. They never see some of the awful things they say as damaging to society, whereas a child who decides (wrongly) that the only way to be noticed is to emulate Banksy and scrawl something on a wall earns a lifetime criminal record, with all of its consequences.
Bob Perris
North Shields, Tyne and Wear
