Lee Rigby murder: Michael Adebolajo suing over teeth lost in prison

[ReallyTired]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35058076

I hope that any compensation awarded is given to Lee Rigby's family.

Michael Adebolajo should not see a penny.

"However, I don't think we should ever have a criminal justice system where people in custody can be injured in any circumstances and that is ignored."

There are circumstances when restraint has to be used for either other people's or the retrained safety. Unfortunately any restraint carries a risk. People who look after vulnerable people have to make difficult decisions when to use restraint. Should prison officers stand by while prisoner A attempts to strangle prisoner B? Should the prison officers be punished if
prisoner A ends up losing two teeth, but fails to murder prisoner B.

Prisoners have more understanding of their actions than children in special schools, adults in care homes, pychiaratic patients or those with disabilities. It's only reasonable that the behaviour that led up to the restraint situation. Is considered when awarding compensation.

I think that what Michael Adebolajo did was utterly terrible.

But even criminals should be protected by our legal system. It is the very mark of what makes us civilised - however distasteful/counter intuitive that may seem.

The same goes for the death penalty - is doesn't matter how much it costs to keep our worst criminals - that financial cost is nothing against the moral cost of taking someones life.

I am against the death penalty - you'd make this murderer a martyr.

There are circumstances where a restraint is deemed lawful whether it's a school, pychiaratic hospital, nursing home or prison. Restraint is only used when restraint and the risks of it going wrong is the lesser of two evils. The legal system needs to look at a case when a restraint went wrong to decide whether the use of force was justified.

If you punish officers for a legitimate restraint going wrong then prison officers would be fearful of using restraint. Prisoners need officers trained in restraint techniques and prepared to use such techniques to remain safe. Otherwise our prisons will turn into places of complete chaos.

TheFairyCaravan, you really need to educate yourself on the legal aid system. Legal aid is not available for cases which have less than a 50% chance of success, and there are strict criteria governing the need for costs to be proportionate both to the likely damages and the chances of success. The latter have to be reviewed throughout the case and if they drop then legal aid is withdrawn. If the legally aided person succeeds and is awarded costs, then there will be no claim on legal aid funds. We have more than sufficient safeguards in place, the system doesn't need to be reviewed.

OP - restraint techniques used in psychiatric hospitals and prisons are v.v different. I have been involved in both. Often with the same client group I. E mentally ill, except in prison the individuals are often more unwell than in psychiatric hospitals as medication can not be enforced as it can be in a hospital.

I am sure the use of restraint techniques in a special school or the police are different again. The aim is to the stop the unacceptable behaviour of the restrained. Maintaining th dignity and safety of the restrained is essential.

If the restrained is injuried in anyway it is a disaster. Sadly restraints have gone wrong in all manner of settings. It's vital that people who might be called on to do restraint are trained in the safest possible techniques and that training is kept up to date to minimise the risk of restraint going wrong.

If a prisoner ends up with broken teeth then the restraint techniques used by the prison need to be reviewed.

face down restraint should be illegal whatever the setting. I imagine the logistics of restraining an 18 year old in a special school or a grown man in jail have a lot in common.

Well he should have been behaving and he wouldn't have needed restraining. Reminds me of when I worked in retail and a shoplifter accused the policeman cuffing him of rebreaking his arm which apparently was recently out of plaster. Should have thought of that before you committed the crime then arsehole.

VinylScratch your attitude reassures me, I was scared people that thought the same as myself were being replaced by ott liberals.. Your comment is so true, can't commit a crime then start complaining that you haven't been treated unfairly!

A lot of special schools use positive behavioural support programmes to manage behaviour.

www.bild.org.uk

The belief is that bad behaviour happens for a reason and that the child needs to be taught other ways of getting needs met. However restraint can be part of managing challenging behaviour. I have no idea if prisons do anything similar.

I think it's reasonable to expect more understanding of what is acceptable behaviour from a prisoner than someone with severe learning difficulties.

The thing is - 'don't commit the crime' might be a legitimate answer if it wasn't for the fact that huge amounts of offenders come from poor socio - economic backgrounds, have experienced abuse from families or in LA care, have mental health problems or learning disabilities.

If we had a criminal justice system full of people with good mental health, no developmental disorders with non- abusive childhoods with all the help and support they needed, I'd say 'yep, you had every opportunity and you fucked up, you made capacitous decisions so do your time and stop moaning'.

But it isn't like that. I've worked in prisons and mental health hospitals. In prison, you meet the very occasional good background, healthy individual who took the wrong road. But it's so rare it is commented on.

In the overwhelming majority of people, you're working with neglected, abused and clinically disordered (either MH and or/developmentally) individuals.

The kids that you watch on Children in need or similar and feel great sympathy for but they don't stay cute and the damage that was done to them is then inflicted on other people and then we don't care anymore. They should suddenly be 'decent' members of society despite nothing in their lives ever being 'decent' or teaching them that.

And I'm not a 'leftie' or a 'bleeding heart'. People should be punished for crimes they have committed but the punishment is the deprivation of liberty.

Prisons are horrible places and the prison system itself does enough to punish. It's enough. Violence or injury is outside of that punishment.

He's basically doing it to rub it in the faces of Lee Rigby's family and taxpayers. To show how he can abuse the rights and freedoms of the land he is supposedly so against.

Don't want to sound all daily mail, but a murderer in Saudi wouldn't exactly get the same treatment? Especially murdering a soldier.

I think it's high time Legal Aid was changed to prevent cases like this being taken on. It's an absolute piss take that he's allowed to ask for compensation. He lashed out at the prison officers, he needed restraining and hit his face on a window.

The problem with this argument thefairycaravan is that we only know all this because of the investigation. You're using a conclusion that we couldn't be certain of until the investigation to argue that it shouldn't have taken place. Also, do read dipankri's post about legal aid. Some of you commenting on this thread clearly don't actually know how it works.

I am always at the suggestions that other prisoners should beat up/murder someone and that the guards should be able to turn a blind eye. Just who do you think the people are who would be metering out this "justice"? Fine upstanding members of society who happened to be disgusted at what he had done and wanting to act out of pure disgust? or similarly criminal lowlife who are themselves serving sentences for the brutal murders/rapes/other violent crimes against innocent victims who want the notoriety of being able to say they "done in Lee Rigby's killer."?

We have a criminal justice system for a reason, and the sentence handed down is the one for the crime committed. It's not ok for other criminals to be handing down justices of their own esp given they are all there for similar reasons. it's also not ok for inmates to be losing teeth when restrained for other reasons, and those incidents need to be investigated independently and with no reference to the crimes the inmate is serving a sentence for.

Can't say too much, but it does happen.
And when it happens to the likes of Lee Rigby's killers and baby P's killers etc it is so fucking deserved. If I was a guard and I seen baby P's mum getting a kicking, I would be so fucking tempted to look away. Some people deserve to feel the pain they inflicted on somebody else, from somebody bigger and tougher than them.

Oh how my heart bleeds for him

“You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners”.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The punishment should be doing the time. The sheer mundanity of day in day out boredom. I want his sentence to last a very long time. I want him to feel every day of it. To wake up each morning to the thought that this is all that he can hope for.

As time goes by his complaints will become more trivial. He will become an irrelevance.

If he'd not needed to be restrained he would probably still have his teeth. HE chose to kick off.

Like saying hunger strikers being hospitalised is sad. THEY chose to not eat.

I think if there was a death penalty in this case he would be hailed as a hero to other radicalised nutters. Let him rot in jail.

^^ this x100

It's at this point in these debates my mind always starts wandering to

There is a system by which Lee Rigby's estate could freeze any damages he gets so that they went to his widow (or whoever he left his estate to if he made a will) - but if they exercised it he would probably just drop the case.