"Oh," they cry, "not another U-turn!" First there were the forests, then there were the GP commissioning consortiums and now there are Ken Clarke's sentencing plans.
The political fallout from Clarke's intervention could come as early astommorow amid speculation that he will use an appearance on a BBC Question Time special filmed at Wormwood Scrubs prison, in London, to announce changes to his sentencing plans.
His analysis of the penal system's shortcomings is also acute: its poor assessment of inmates' needs; the miserable amount of education - as low as five hours a week in local prisons - that inmates receive, when 95% are in need of urgent help; the failure of many sentencing plans to even refer to tackling offending behaviour.
Roman Polanski's legal options narrowed Monday as a Los Angeles judge denied his request to unseal testimony about a sentencing plan in his 33-year-old sex-crimes case.
Lawyers for Roman Polanski filed a motion in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday seeking access to the sealed transcript of testimony by a prosecutor, Roger Gunson, about a judge's sentencing plan in the 33-year-old sex case against Mr. Polanski.
The motion contends that Mr. Gunson's testimony would prove that an extradition request filed with Switzerland last year included a false depiction of the sentencing plan by Judge Laurence J. Rittenband.
On Thursday Mr. Polanski's American lawyers filed a motion in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking the sealed testimony of Roger Gunson, a retired deputy district attorney, about a sentencing plan devised by Judge Laurence J. Rittenband.
"We can see a reduction in the amount of drugs entering the establishment, the use of force is reducing and better care, sentence plans and resettlement arrangements for prisoners are being put in place.
Or, more poetically, "My father bought his socks in Paris" or, still more iambically, "In Paris, father bought his socks…" But she gives me a steady, opaque, slightly sickened look at the suggestion, and clearly already has memoir-opening sentence plans of her own, probably also involving her father.
(45 : p. 13) The issue of Gender will be a crucial element in these Correctional Sentence Plans, particularly in relation to male offenders whose victims were women and children.
Exclusion criteria were: plans that would interfere with participation in the psychoeducation in the next three months, such as plans to move away from the uptake area or waiting to serve a prison sentence, plans to enter residential rehabilitation or hospitalization, and waiting to serve a prison sentence.
