In all likelihood, Demiesh Williams will spend Christmas at home in 2028. He will be able to see his family and friends. He will be able to eat and drink what he likes. He will be able to look forward to a new year.
There will be no Christmas at home for Andrew Clark. In fact, there will be no Christmases at all — and no new years. Mr Clark’s loved ones will spend every Christmas for the rest of their lives with a literal or figurative empty seat at their table.
This is because Mr Williams killed Mr Clark. He did not intend to kill him, but he did, and not by pure accident — as in a car crash, say — but because he chose, with full presence of mind, to assault him.
Why? Because Mr Clark had scolded him for jumping a queue. For this offence, Mr Williams left the shop, retrieved a face covering from his car and slapped Mr Clark hard enough to knock him to the ground and leave him with the brain damage that would ultimately kill him.
He has been sentenced to just five years and three months in jail.
Now, I know that Mr Williams has committed manslaughter and not murder. I know that he has pleaded guilty to the offence. But it still seems patently and painfully absurd that having killed a man, after deliberately initiating violence, because he scolded him for jumping a queue, Mr Williams, having spent time on remand since the killing of Mr Clark, will be home within a few Christmases.
When he is released, Mr Williams will be a young man in his early thirties, with the same physical strength that allowed him to knock a man to the ground with a single slap, and the same arrogant temper that made him believe that it was acceptable. This raises the question of whether British courts are endangering Britons. But it also raises the question of what it means to have justice.
Mr Clark is dead. His wife and his daughter both gave powerful statements about the devastation of their lives. “I think about all the moments my dad will not be there for,” said his 14-year-old girl, “He will never walk me down the aisle, and that is something I will have to live with for the rest of my life.” Nothing can right this wrong, of course, because a man cannot be brought back from the dead. But can anybody claim that spending the equivalent of an election cycle behind bars is an appropriate penalty when a man is killed as a result of your deliberate and vindictive behaviour?
Think, too, of the broad effects of sentences like this. Mr Clark, it seems, was defending civilised norms. He was standing up for the basic principle of fairness which maintains that people should wait for their turn. For this, he was killed, and his killer has received just a few short years in jail. Mr Clark joins other good citizens who have been killed for volunteering to criticise antisocial behaviour. In 2025, such people must accept not just that they are taking their lives into their hands but that the courts may not do anything that approximates avenging them. What are the incentives for speaking out against injustice and dysfunction?
Left-wing commentators sometimes write as if Britain is the sort of place where people can be jailed for pinching a bag of crisps. It is not (and quite right too). It is often the opposite. As the invaluable Ed West has been documenting, people have not received long jail sentences despite horrific crimes or multifarious smaller crimes. In many cases, this has allowed their criminality to escalate. For example, Joshua Carney raped a mother and her daughter after being released on license halfway through a jail sentence despite an extensive history of convictions. (He will be up for probation just ten years into his sentence.)
The law is too soft on criminals. But the courts are also dealing with horrendous institutional dysfunction
Clever-clever legal commentators are liable to point out that cases of excessive lenience tend to fall within sentencing guidelines. I’m sure they do. So much the worse for the sentencing guidelines. If you called a politician corrupt and they replied that politicians are in fact permitted to take large amounts of cash from mysterious Eastern European oligarchs, that would make the system corrupt rather than just the man.
The law is too soft on criminals. But the courts are also dealing with horrendous institutional dysfunction. There just aren’t enough prisons or people to work in them. Robert Jenrick of the Conservatives is right to protest against Williams’s soft treatment. But when he calls Labour soft on crime he should remember how the Conservatives failed, despite major warnings, to increase prison capacity to adequate levels.
This is despite the fact that prisons demonstrably work in reducing crime, as evidenced by numerous studies from numerous nations. Again, this is not to become the sort of stereotypical old duffer who thinks that a 16-year-old who smokes a spliff or scribbles on a wall should be doing hard labour. It is to say that evidently dangerous and predatory people should not be on the streets.
This is especially the case when they have assaulted innocent people. “Over-crowded and underfunded prisons place pressure on courts to sentence based on capacity rather than justice,” the family of Andrew Clark have rightly said, “’Without genuine accountability, true justice and meaningful reform, reoffending will continue and many more families may face the same devastation we have.”
“Andrew will always be remembered for his kindness, generosity, humour and love,” the family’s statement concludes. I’m sure he will. That his loved ones took the time to comment on the safety of other families is evidence that these virtues united them. The state should be doing more to back up such good-hearted men, women and children.
