Towards The Lynch Mob

Simon Jenkins writes:

The chief enemy of British freedom at present is the British press. The justice secretary, Jack Straw, was right eventually to refuse details of the re-jailing of the child murderer Jon Venables. By then it was too late. Following a possible breach in Venables' new identity, he was pursued and allegedly caught with pornography on his computer. It is unclear whether this allegation, while sufficient to send him back to prison, would be enough for him to stand trial. The probation system seems to have worked as it should.

That was until ministers and the media became involved. Announcing Venables' return to jail, Straw said it was because there were allegations that he had committed an "extremely serious" offence. He mentioned none and brought no charges against him. He is a lawyer, and must have known that this would declare open season for lurid speculation. It was an extraordinary decision.

Straw and the home secretary, Alan Johnson, then sated themselves on publicity. Johnson declared the public had "a right to know" what Venables was alleged to have done to breach his parole, an obscure right when the offence was unproven. Straw contradicted Johnson, said such a right was "not presently in the interests of justice", and indeed would "undermine the integrity of the criminal justice process".

The media took up the cry. BBC News, now chasing ratings with tabloid fervour, covered the Venables case extensively. His crime was "almost too terrible to contemplate", it announced, before contemplating it at length. The tabloids went into full outrage mode. The Sun offered perhaps the most prejudicial front page in modern times, declaring: "On a scale of 1 to 5, Venables' child porn rated 4."

Leading a pack that included the Mirror and Mail titles, the Sun was unfazed by an attempted government injunction of restraint. It wrote of "experts horrified" at Venables' computer material, "among the most depraved and serious anyone could possess" and involving "an element of sexual violence against children". There was no sign of Venables having done more than allegedly look at porn images.

By yesterday, the Venables case had merged with another youth abuse case, that of Peter Chapman, groomer and murderer of the teenage Ashleigh Hall. The Sun linked the two and declared: "Mothers Betrayed: Two Women Let Down by Justice." Bulger's mother, with publicist in tow, went straight to the point, "hitting out at government handling". Ashleigh's mother, Andrea Hall, "blasted cops" and felt "let down by those who were supposed to be monitoring" the killer, a known sex offender. The implication in both cases was of "government" being somehow to blame.

Straw and Johnson did nothing to disabuse this implication. They could have de-escalated the affair by firmly leaving the Venables case to the judge who let him free, Lady Butler-Sloss, the probation service and the police. Either the police should have brought charges or the matter could have been left to burn itself out. Cases involving children are emotional, but there is no reason for politicians and the press abetting each other to make them more so. Venables had shown remorse and is said to be a candidate for rehabilitation. He may not be entitled to the benefit of any doubt, but justice is entitled to its dignities.

Instead, Venables' prosecution has been rendered near impossible. Straw agreed to meet and consult the original victim's mother, Denise Fergus, who was demanding "justice" and the "right to know". Why victims' families should enjoy special rights long after a case is over is not explained. The history of justice is of the channelling of personal vendetta and communal revenge into the rule of law. Now the law seems to be going backwards, towards the lynch mob.

The press campaign for greater transparency in public affairs has been noble, but is not unqualified. As the former director of public prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, said in the Guardian yesterday: "Like the right to speak freely, the right to know can never be absolute." Excessive transparency can lead authority to install a battery of defensive mechanisms, defences that are becoming a blight on good government.

As was seen after the Bulger, Soham, Baby P and Doncaster cases, ministers react to each apparent failure not by acknowledging risk but with laws and regulations to minimise blame. The system becomes hyper-safe, risk-averse, regulation-happy and power-hungry. Public expectation of the state is raised to impossible heights. No parent is ever to blame, rather the authorities who claim to be responsible for parenting. Britain is quietly abrogating to the state both personal and parental responsibility.

Press and politicians may complain bitterly of the regulation, surveillance and control that now emanate from Whitehall and town hall. Yet the same press and politicians demand ever more control when the slightest thing goes wrong. Heads must roll and lessons be learned. Power is sucked from councils, prisons, schools, police forces. Responsibility is sucked from teachers, probation officers, doctors and social workers. We all protest, but we cannot bring ourselves to accept the risk of relinquishing such control.

In the case of the death of Baby P, the real scandal appears to be not so much the failure of the family – families "fail" every day – nor the failure of supervision. The scandal seems to lie in why that supervision failed. A local agency of government was so hard-pressed by regulation and monitoring that its social workers spent 60% of every day in front of a computer safeguarding their information trails, rather than doing the job of looking after children.

The reality is that ministers never knowingly shed power. When anything goes wrong they demand more to put it right. When the press cries "something must be done", they try to do even more. It is the default mode of those who lack the political courage to stand up to pressure, to take a risk and trust others. As Pope said, it is thus that "we bring to one dead level every mind".

The cliché holds that revealing the most lurid details of decisions about individuals is the price we pay for a transparent democracy. This is rubbish. Transparency that contributes to injustice, failed rehabilitation and eventually even greater secrecy is bad transparency. The Labour government's obsessive lack of trust in public servants and its yen to de-professionalise their work with targets cannot be in the public interest. Nor was this week's handing of justice over to the tender mercies of the press.