United Kingdom Justice Secretary Lammy, having recently promoted the end of juries, has now declared that appeals should end, procedures that have worked for centuries, now discarded by the highly unpopular Labour government. Having descended on that slippery slope after the earlier removal of preliminary inquiry commital proceedings years ago, the British leadership have yet again started at the rear end of pressing problems like overcrowded prisons and social disorder.
The remedial work on these problems has to start at the front end in homes, schools and communities.
Lammy either intends to challenge Starmer for leadership or destroy the Labour government.
However if there is a new world order, then the British government should avoid the thin veneer of justice, like recent Caribbean maritime assassinations, and simply execute judgment in the streets by the police who have shown themselves recently to be incapable of supervising themselves. Roaming Black Marias can then transport the summarily convicted innocents to prisons or some rural kidnap site, depending on the driver’s mood.
Ask Wayne Couzens or David Carrick.
The next step will likely be lowering the age of criminal responsibility, incarceration of children in high security prisons and the removal of tribunals in some cases, evolving to most cases. The reintroduction of capital offences may well be on the agenda.
This daily train to prison madness is juxtaposed beside an outside world of pardons for the worst of humanity and reduced sentences for the politically well connected. The man on the Clapham omnibus will not obey the law if there is one rule for him and another for the politicians.
If that were not bad enough, the British Overseas Territories are likely to be dragged along into that abyss of injustice and humanity. The UK decides what their colonies may and may not do including legalizing same sex couples but not personal use of marijuana. Two opposite ends of the Caribbean cultural spectrum.
The Justice Secretary must not have heard of, or remembered, the Post Office Scandal that ruined the lives of nearly one thousand innocent people before their convictions were overturned on appeal.
The good thing is that most Caribbean islands have discarded the yoke of colonial masters and retain some independent thought but regrettably no group solidarity in the face of American bellicose incursions.
Round and round the maypole.
Notes
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7vdvrnnvzo
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/more-committal-hearings-abolished
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1wpp4w14pqo
https://news.sky.com/story/putting-senior-oficers-in-charge-of-disciplinary-panels-does-not-get-to-the-heart-of-the-problem-12951397
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/former-honduran-president-released-us-prison-after-trump-pardon-2025-12-02
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2eppqd2nyo
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazilian-lawmakers-approve-law-cut-bolsonaro-jail-term-afp-reports-2025-12-10
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
His views are his own.
