Ken Clarke is not evil

Ken Clarke, the justice secretary, today has been brandished a "danger to women", and is under pressure to resign, after he suggested that some rapes were worse than others, and that he was considering halfing jail time for rapists who admitted guilt. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3588801/Sex-attack-victim-demands-Ken-Clarke-sacking-for-endangering-women.html)

First of all, all rapes are bad, whether they're committed by your boyfriend when he's drunk, to being committed by a family member, to being ambushed by someone in a dark alley. All are crimes. However, in our legal system, rightly or wrongly, some rapes would be considered more serious than others, as different rapists would get different jail sentences, depending on the circumstances/likelihood to re-offend. It doesn't mean some of them aren't serious. However, if you think all rapes, whatever the circumstances, should get the same jail sentence, it's unfair to criticise Ken Clarke, your critisisms should be going to the judges instead.

It is very opportunistic for Jack Straw to criticize Clarke for his comments, saying that "The exact circumstances may have varied, but the profound emotional damage, the violation, was the same.", basically saying that all rapes should be treated equally. If he really felt that way when he was justice secretary, he would have put in minimum sentences for rapists. As it turns out he isn't, so he is nothing more than a hypocrite. 

Clarke was also criticized for suggesting that sentences should be cut by half for those who plead guilty at the first opportunity. Again, he was referring to all crimes not just rapes. I don't agree with it personally, but I understand his logic when it comes to rape crimes. There is something like 6% of reported rapes lead to a conviction. (However, 60% of those charged are convicted (http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8319/). Rape crimes, due to their nature, are hard to convict for as it is hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. That means there are a lot more rapists out there, and I understand the reasoning that it is better for those to be in prison (even for half the time) compared to not being in prison at all. Although, I would still suggest that it probably wouldn't make a difference, as only those with the most evidence against them would plead guilty, as again rapes are very hard to prove.

But anyway, again he is critised by Labour, even though pleading guilty will reduce your sentence by a third anyway under the current rules, which were inherited from Labour. Even before the Clarke situation,  Sadiq Khan the shadow justice secretary said that we should be "jailing fewer people", and Ed Milliband said that we should have shorter sentences (http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/dan-hodges/2011/05/ken-clarke-labour-policy). Again, I don't think Ken Clarke has done much wrong personally, he was only stating what the courts have done for years, when it came to different sentences for different rapes (although the way he said it wasn't voter-friendly), and whilst I don't agree with it, reducing the jail term by half instead of a third (16% less jail time), I don't think matters that much anyway. It just exposes, again, how much of a slimeball Ed Milliband and his hypocrites "R" us Labour crew are.