People across the UK were shocked, deeply shocked, last month by the news of the conviction of a former nurse for the murders of seven babies in her care.

British people have also been outraged by reports that hospital managers had ignored repeated concerns expressed by the nurse’s medical colleagues. In response to significant public, media and political pressure, the government has established a statutory inquiry to investigate this case.

Further public outrage was stoked by the country’s most notorious child murderer’s refusal to attend court to hear the judge read her sentence and statements from the families of her victims. This has resulted in calls for such attendance to be made compulsory.

Laws are already in place to allow judges to view such refusals to attend sentencing hearings as acts of contempt of court and to penalize such transgressions by adding further time to custodial sentences.

The threat of extra time inside would, however, probably have made no difference in this particular case: the convicted nurse was already going to be sentenced, as had been expected, to remain in jail for the rest of her life.

Rishi Sunak’s administration has this month therefore announced plans to give judges additional powers to compel criminals to attend their sentencing hearings. Those judges won’t only be able to increase prison sentences by two years for failure to comply with a court order to attend, but will also be empowered to compel prisoners to attend court (either in person or by video link) through the use of “reasonable force” on the part of custody officers.

In a national atmosphere of heightened anxiety over this horrific case, there have, thus far, been remarkably few concerns raised as to how this approach might work in relation to human rights and what a reasonable use of force might constitute under such circumstances.

Related News

News from Nowhere: The abuse of power

It’s official: British Army facing extinction

Indeed, far from resisting this policy, the opposition Labour Party has berated the government for its apparent caution in this matter, with the Shadow Justice Secretary accusing the government of having “dragged their feet” rather than taking immediate action.

It's generally understood that force may be used by agents of the civil state in order to preserve life and to prevent harm, crime, and flight from justice. Its use must take place within legal and ethical frameworks and must be subject to mechanisms of accountability. It must also be proportionate, reasonable, and necessary.

The use of force to compel compliance outside those functions might be thought to constitute an act of torture, as prohibited by the European Convention on Human Rights – an international agreement which those on the right of the Conservative Party would dearly love to see Britain quit.

The degree of intervention permitted and required in order to physically force a convicted criminal to attend court or to face a screen in their prison cell may well eventually prove to be the subject of extensive legal wrangling. It may also be that the populist fervor arising from this terrible case will end up being mobilized by ultra-conservative elements in UK politics to push the government towards a referendum on the country’s departure from the ECHR.

This could of course have far-reaching impacts, not only upon domestic society and civic freedoms, but also upon the perception and position of the nation in the European arena and upon the global stage. It could transform an appalling tragedy into a national catastrophe.

The British public are rightly horrified to hear reports in the news of the killing of children. Last month alone, headlines featured the suspicious deaths of a ten-year-old girl in the southeast of England and a two-year-old boy in the northwest. But potentially degrading acts of judicial retribution offer poor restitution for those devastating losses. Indeed, they may eventually compound the cycles of violence that they’re intended to expose and oppose.

This month, a British terror suspect briefly escaped from custody by strapping himself to the underside of a delivery van. The prison officers’ union blamed government cuts to the staffing of the country’s overcrowded jails. There are those who’d suggest that for reasons of national security, such concerns should represent a rather more immediate priority for the Ministry of Justice.

Meanwhile, with news reports of the police opening a new investigation into infant deaths in the maternity units of another hospital trust, it seems clear that the government also urgently needs to tackle what appears to be a culture of managerial complacency, indifference, and inaction in certain areas of the public healthcare system.

Yet to do so would require an administration committed to something more than cosmetic policies, one able to display both moral conviction and political substance – and sadly, that’s something which the UK currently lacks.