Drug sentencing does not serve us as a community

Our son Pip has now been denied the chance to appeal against his custodial sentence of two and a half years. This sentence was imposed by the structure we have in place that considers a person diagnosed with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) to be a criminal. The test for many criminal cases is a level of guilty knowledge, however in this case, and in many others where a person is using substances, we as a society are working on the expectation that a conscious and rational choice or decision was made. This is not the case with trauma victims – trauma affects many aspects of cognition, including decision-making.

As reported in the Press, Pip was a paediatric nurse who has helped sick children and refugees and suffered trauma as a result. With inadequate support from local mental health services, he tried to drown out his trauma and sent away for some tranquillisers (previously known as valium, which many people have taken as a drug for years) and a small amount of cocaine – which he was going to use to blot out his mental agony.

What we are grateful for is how many people recognise this system does not serve us as a community. We have started to ask some questions, beginning with ‘Why?’

. Why is he now in prison in Guernsey when he was diagnosed with PTSD and other mental health problems, after a suicide attempt in Oxford and weeks spent there in a mental health unit (where he was treated kindly and respectfully)?

. Why when we brought him home to his birth island of Guernsey thinking it would be the ideal place for him to recuperate did the authorities twist the knife – this includes the police and law courts. He was shown no sympathy, or understanding or help, and instead treated like a master criminal.

. Why did Judge Fooks, after being given this medical information, as well as many excellent character references, along with a probation report stating he should not be in prison and instead charged with community service, feel she should impose such a draconian sentence when she had other options available to her?

. Why did Judge Fooks impose the outworn Richards guidelines, which are only meant as ‘guidelines’ to be implemented sensitively and appropriately? Either these must be used, or they are in fact a ‘guideline’, which our officials are able to disregard in cases requiring some compassion. Sentencing is an art, not a science, it should not be used as a straitjacket however loosely tied.

We cannot clap for essential workers and then punish them for giving their all, at great cost to themselves.

In 2020 the Committee for Home Affairs published their Justice Review and it clearly says:

‘At the moment it seems like a legal system rather than a justice system.’ and ‘Is it justice or justice according to the law?’

This document also identifies that the mandate for the drug and alcohol strategy was passed to Public Health in 2017. Why? Because substance use is a meter for Public Health and not the police. So why are Pip and others being treated this way? It is not enough to recognise it. Something must be done about it.

. Why, when a document was produced in 2020 by HSC (commissioned by Dr Nicola Brink), which summarises the evidence of substance users on the island, this has been ignored or put on the back burner? This report considered small amounts of drugs for personal use should not result in a custodial sentence or imprisonment.

. Why are there many other young men and women in prison serving sentences for small drug quantities when sex offenders and violent criminals are quite often fined, or given small sentences and community service?

. Why doesn’t Guernsey have an appropriate mental health system where people can be treated with respect and kindness? Why does it impose sentences which break up families, destroy jobs, deprive children of their parents, ruin close relatives’ lives, all for the sake of outdated views on personal drug use – use of which is never helped by judgement. Judgment brings shame and this is why it is hidden in the first place.

. Why is Guernsey wasting tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of pounds of public money sending young people to prison when they could be providing tax revenues, performing useful community service instead of vegetating in prison? We need humane, restorative approaches to mental health and personal use of drugs, not a punitive, wasteful use of public funds.

. Why are States members failing the community by ignoring petitions and ignoring government reports such as the judicial review of sentencing? We need to advance as a community instead of enacting harsh, punitive justice which ignores personal circumstances and inflicts unnecessary harm on the community it is supposed to serve.

The petition against Pip’s custodial sentence has received thousands of signatures (4,492 at time of writing). We are truly grateful for the intelligent and compassionate responses we have received from so many in our community. It is these many and unheard souls who will pick up the pieces of the people this current system stigmatises. We have passed a place where judgment should truly be reserved for those who cause a danger to us and our children and the people who sell or profit from the underground markets. Markets which only exist because we lack compassion for each other and the services needed to support our essential workers.

CAROL AND TOM ORCHARD