THE CONVICTION OF THE CAMBRIDGE TWO IS BONKERS

'Anyone Whose House Is Burgled Should Be Put In Jail - For Failure To
Prevent Burglary'

Of all the bonkers convictions of recent years, few can match the
case of the Cambridge charity workers, Ruth Wyner and John Brock, who
have finally been released on bail. Their crime was that, at the
homeless unit run by them, some of the homeless were secretly taking
drugs. There was no suggestion that Ruth or John aided this, but they
were banged up anyway for "failure to prevent heroin".

As this means that you can be jailed for being in charge of a
building in which a crime takes place, anyone whose house is burgled
should be put in jail - for "failure to prevent burglary". And Jack
Straw should have marched himself as well as his boy to the police.
Someone could skin up in the toilet at the House of Commons and get
Betty Boothroyd arrested. Two puffs in the Vatican and the Pope's up
before the beak.

This would make more sense than the convictions in Cambridge, as the
homeless are the most likely group in society to take drugs, with some
reports suggesting that 70 per cent are addicted. So how were the care
workers supposed to prevent it happening? Maybe the judge thought it
was as easy as a minicab driver stopping passengers from smoking. They
just needed a couple of signs saying "thank you for not jacking up".
Or perhaps they should have tried to attract a better class of
homeless, by only allowing those to stay who had a verifiable home
address. This is what they do at the Dorchester and there's never any
trouble there.

Most ridiculous of all, in order to obtain the conviction, the police
went into the home undercover and took 300 hours of secret film in
order to ascertain that drug-addicted homeless people were taking
drugs. Maybe their next job was to take 300 hours of film in a
hospital to expose the fact that some of the patients are ill.

At least the undercover police seem to have made themselves less
conspicuous than the ones who used to visit the road of squats I once
lived in. Once a week a pair would stroll down the road in short hair,
immaculately creased trousers, shiny black shoes and kaftans,
lolloping up to passers-by and asking "got any weed, er, man"? But is
this the best use of police resources the Cambridge constabulary can
manage?

They should make some of the money back by dubbing the whole 300
hours into Polish and showing it as an innovative piece of genius at
the National Film Theatre.

The outcome was that Ruth and John were jailed for five and four
years respectively, and probably felt that they were characters in
Kafka's The Trial. They must have been expecting to be approached by
an official warning them not to say anything if they came across two
men in a cupboard whipping each other with belts. And advising them
that the appeal judge was certain to look very favourably upon them if
they followed him into a dungeon and performed a dance to a room full
of dwarves.

So for the last seven months they've been criminals. No one outside
the police and judiciary thought so. No one drives past Cambridge pubs
muttering "that's where Ruth 'The Hat' Wyner planned her blag with
John 'I prevent nothing' Brock." It wouldn't be much of a crime film
if someone made Natural Born Homeless Unit Carers. So for the last
seven months, most unpredictably, Cambridge has had a "two". Thousands
of tenacious but furious people from the area have lobbied, petitioned
and marched for their release. At the demonstration I attended, it was
obvious most people were new to this sort of thing, with placards made
from a cardboard box and written in felt pen. And one of the most
moving speeches I've ever seen at Trafalgar Square was when Ruth's
husband marched to the microphone and yelled, "look, we've got to do
something, this is crazy", and then wandered off looking utterly bemused.

Now they're out on bail until the appeal is heard later this year,
and without the campaigning that would never have happened. Mr Straw,
on the other hand, could have released them from day one, but he
didn't. Why, I wonder, did he go into politics? He must have had some
inkling of getting to a position of such influence that he could do
public good. Now he's Home Secretary, and while public good is
achieved by people who would never have imagined they would be
marching and yelling into megaphones, he has ended up as one of those
that decent people march against.

So congratulations to Ruth, John and their supporters. And next time
they get jailed, I hope they get better value. For a few more months
inside they could have arranged illegal arms deals to Saudi Arabia,
and orchestrated a family lie-in to cover it up. Or murdered an
elected president, used the homeless unit as a torture chamber, and on
release been flown half way round the world with a present of a
magical wheelchair.