BY PAUL T HORGAN
Deporting Foreign National Offenders (FNOs) is a rather hot topic connected with the overall issue of our current regime of unrestricted migration. The UK prison population has a disproportionate number of FNOs. They stay behind bars because there is a large and lucrative business model to keep them there. Immigration and Human Rights lawyers hold sway over the criminal justice system, and it seems that, just like the excess of trades unions in the 1970s brought forth a reforming Conservative government that stayed long enough in power to curb this excess, so it will require yet another change of government to put these lawyers back in their box.
It took Margaret Thatcher about eight years and a fair wind to cut the unions down to size. So the immigration problem may only be fully addressed by 2037 at the earliest, as the defeat of the Labour Party at the 2029 General Election is all but inevitable now. It is now obvious Labour will stay in power until the last possible moment. We have a long wait for things to get put right.
However, there seems to be an exception to this regime of keeping FNOs behind bars due to lawyerly activism rather than kicking them out of the country. Hadush Kebatu, the Epping Groper, is set to be deported very soon, according to David Lammy. This raises several issues, not least the creation of a moral hazard in the criminal justice system.
The first issue is that deporting a criminal means freeing him. Kebatu committed his crimes against women earlier this year. He was convicted of five offences: Attempted Sexual Assault on a Child aged 14, Inciting or Causing a Child aged 13 to 15 to Engage in Sexual Activity, Sexual Assault on a Female (aged 14), Harassment without Violence, and Sexual Assault on a Female.
At Kebatu’s sentencing, Judge Williams said the following, “As I indicated at the outset there is no realistic prospect of rehabilitation. The probation report outlines that you have no intention of addressing your behaviour, not least because you simply will not acknowledge it. The report also outlines your poor behaviour in custody and concludes that overall, it was not possible to rule out you committing a serious further offence of a sexual nature. You pose a significant risk of re-offending.“
He added, “The time that you have spent in custody will be credited towards this sentence. You will also be subject to an early release regime which at present requires you to serve at least 40% of the sentence before being eligible for release. The earliest date of your release will be calculated and you will be notified of this.“
Kebatu was jailed on the 23rd September this year. Under the Early Release Scheme, Kebatu could have been released, if he behaved himself, on or about December 3rd of this year, if his time in remand from July is counted towards his sentence. Instead David Lammy has stated that Kebatu will be deported this week. On this basis, Kebatu is getting better treatment than a non-FNO, that is a British Subject or a foreigner with Indefinite Leave to Remain. He is being gifted liberty because an operational or clerical error saw prison officers kicking him out of prison, despite his protest. Kebatu was also subject to various Sexual Harm Prevention Orders.
Wither equality?
The second issue is that his rapid deportation creates a perverse incentive for foreigners to commit crimes. If the only penalty for committing a crime is to be kicked out of the UK, then a foreigner can come here, commit his crime, and in the (unlikely) event he is caught, he will be set free and told not to darken our shores again. This is not a deterrent to would-be criminals who have no strong roots in this country. It actually promotes a culture of instant gratification followed by a limited punishment and some free travel to an overseas destination, although not one of the criminal’s own choosing.
This, of course assumes that the aforementioned Human Rights lawyers have not intervened and successfully convinced a liberal judge that deporting the criminal, so he can no longer commit crimes against the British people, runs the the risk of harm at the destination of his deportation. But if the criminal is successfully deported, he will have gamed the British Criminal Justice system, as Kebatu has done successfully.
It is interesting to note that the usual suspects of the Human Rights brigade have not rushed to any kind of defence of Kebatu, as they usually do to every other immigrant threatened with deportation. There are Pakistani nationals who were convicted as part of grooming gangs of the rape of white girls who are still living in the communities where they committed their rapes, all because of activist groups and lawyers. Perhaps Kebatu is the wrong kind of FNO.
The third issue is that we have just seen an illegal migrant, who was deported under Sir Keir’s ridiculous ‘one-in, one-out’ scheme, arrive back on our shores within days of being the ‘one-out’, presumably as a loss-leader for the smuggling gangs so demonstrate to their customer base of would-be rapists of combat age that their business model remains completely secure. It would seem reasonable that Kebatu could benefit from a similar marketing effort by the gangs to demonstrate exactly how ineffectual our authorities are.
The return of Kebatu on a small boat in a few weeks’ time would be a humiliation for the Labour government, but they would be unable to address the underlying issue, especially considering that our Prime Minister is a former Marxist Human Rights lawyer, and that the inevitability of Labour’s defeat in 2029 means he has no incentive to fix the problem, as it will not restore any support to the government.
The public has made their verdict clear. This is a lame duck leader of a lame duck party in a lame duck government.
While it seems that Kebatu actually objected to his untimely release, and seemed at a complete loss about what to do, especially as he seemed to be rather obvious in his unfashionably distinctive prison-issue grey tracksuit and sweatpants (he did not add to his criminality by stealing a change of clothes), he should not benefit from this organisational foul-up by being set free early. He has slightly over a month left on his sentence before he can be considered for early release (assuming good behaviour) and he should serve the lot before being kicked out of our country. That he will be smuggled back in to this country is a matter of conjecture, but it makes good business sense for the smuggling gangs to do this as it will gain massive publicity for their operations, and our government will be exposed as impotent to the combined challenge of the gangs and activist lawyers. Labour’s opinion polling will collapse further.
It is possible that the government will make it worth Kebatu’s while to stay wherever he is deported, but if this happens, he will be tracked down by reporters as this is still a bad look for the government, and only slightly less than him arriving back on the South coast. It will also create another perverse incentive for foreigners to commit crimes in our country, as they could be deported and with a good sum of money to set themselves up in whatever location they are sent.
So the current situation seems to be a win-win for Kebatu. The system creates a moral hazard. The losers are the British government, but also more importantly the law-abiding, high-trust British people who will once again be let down by those that have been elected to high office.
The worst part of this all is the wait. We will have to see a change of government to see any proper change, and, like Margaret Thatcher, it will take years to take down the entrenched extragovernmental forces of opposition that manifest themselves in street demonstrations and in the courts. And some of this opposition is actually embedded in the apparatus of state and will need to be purged. If we are lucky, the issue will be fully addressed by 2040. But we should not have to rely on luck to halt the rape and sexual assault of teenage girls by foreigners. The first duty of the state is to protect the people. Under Sir Keir, that protecting seems limited and restricted to the very worst kind of people who should not be here in the first place.
Paul T Horgan worked in the IT Sector. He lives in Berkshire.