Who needs a trial? Just hang him.

Once again, Tony Blair ends up sounding just like George Bush. He wants to "re-balance" the criminal justice system in Britain to favor "the victims." From the Guardian:

In a long speech outlining his philosophy on crime, Mr Blair said "unpalatable choices about liberty and security" needed to be made to "rebalance" a system in favour of the law-abiding public.

Mr Blair listed a number of improvements under his watch, but added that the criminal justice system was still "locked" in the 20th century following the great progressive reforms of Victorian times, which sought to tackle unfair sentencing policy in an era where there was no equality before the law.

One unforeseen consequence was that the pervading culture still ensured the fair treatment of suspects and criminals was detached from an equivalent concern with victims.

Part of the problem was the absence of a proper, considered intellectual debate about the nature of liberty in the modern word, Mr Blair said.

In effect, what this always seems to mean is dispensing with the assumption of innocence and the legal rights and protections that flow therefrom and replacing it with an assumption of guilt, once charged with a crime. The assumption of guilt enables the prosecutors to deprive to one degree or another the defendant of his usual rights (e.g., to remain silent, to confront his accusers, to seek counsel, and perhaps even to a trial by a jury of his peers.)

I guess they all believe they are justifying this on the basis of the "one percent doctrine" articulated in a book of the same name by Ron Suskind. In that mode of thinking, if there is even a one percent chance of a person being a dangerous terrorist (or some other evil type), one should assume he is guilty and take action against him without regard to the high probability (99%) that he is actually innocent. It's all part of the pre-emption mentality -- get 'em before they can even think about gettin us.

Frankly, I don't think you have to think very long or very hard about where that kind of thinking will take us.

There were solid reasons why the legal protections we now enjoy evolved. To throw them out now is to put us all at serious risk. For instance, even the most innocent person can have an enemy or two. Under the pre-emption doctrine, all your enemy would have to do is make a false accusation in secret, and zappo, there's at least a one percent reason to assume you're guilty. The rest all flows from that.

You will note that these proposals usually are voiced by those in power, not those out of power. I wonder why ...