Key events18m agoThames Valley chief constable 'considering' joining Police Federation legal challenge28m agoMinister defends early release of PC Andrew Harper's killers amid possible legal challengeContinuing his media round on the airwaves this morning, justice minister Jake Richards said he understood the “strength of feeling” among police about PC Andrew Harper’s death but that without prison places officers would not be able to do their jobs.Richards said that Harper’s Law strengthens the sentence for perpetrators who commit such offences but that “it doesn’t work retrospectively”.“I understand the strength of feeling from police officers generally, but of course within that force in particular after the awful incident with Pc Andrew Harper,” he told BBC Breakfast.“If we do not have prison places available then the police, the good work that they do every day on the streets, finding perpetrators, locking them up, it would be impossible.”Asked about those who remain eligible, Richards told BBC Breakfast:
double quotation markThe new regime comes into effect from October the first. The sentences, or the offences, sorry, which have been carved out, have been published online.
Manslaughter is not one of those offences, and it would be wrong to pick out individual cases within different offending cohorts. That wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be lawful either.
