From the archives........
If lie-detector tests can nail the guilty, why can't they free the innocent?
So, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is set to pilot the use of lie detectors to uncover benefit fraud and impose a "one strike and you're out" approach to anybody found fiddling the system.
Highly laudable, given that, according to DWP figures, the cost of such fiddling was estimated to cost the treasury £800m in 2006-07.
I wonder if its colleagues at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will follow a similar approach in nailing tax avoiders who, according to HMRC calculations, currently cost the Treasury between £10bn and £40bn a year?
We should not hold our breath while waiting to see if the super rich and their accountants are found to have altered the pitch and tone of their voices in a way that beats the lie detector's antennae.
Nearer to home, as far as your correspondent is concerned, the probation service proposes to use polygraphs on sex offenders released on licence.
I am outraged at the hypocrisy of a government that allows some of its departments to use lie detectors to combat fraud and monitor sex offenders, yet refuses to let people protesting their innocence use the same technology.
Currently, there are hundreds of prisoners who claim to be innocent of the charges that put them behind bars. Many of them have been in prison for years, even decades.
Dozens have stated their willingness to take a lie-detector test in an effort to clear their name and gain their freedom. In every case, the Ministry of Justice has refused point blank to consider such requests.
Few have effective legal representation, many have none at all. Yet it is virtually impossible to obtain legal aid without a solicitor, and equally difficult to get the Criminal Cases Review Commission to consider cases not referred to them by lawyers.
Passing a lie-detector test would, at the very least, suggest the need for properly funded legal rep representation.
Solicitor Campbell Malone, from Stephensons, has been involved in miscarriages of justice cases for years and has been instrumental in overturning convictions in many high-profile murder cases.
He says dozens of his clients have urged him to let them take lie-detector tests. He has had to tell them that the courts will not consider evidence from such tests. He says there is an "interesting" contrast between the various government agencies in respect of the tests.
Freed from the need for legal politeness, I regard it as hypocritical in the extreme that government departments intent on stopping benefit fraud regard the polygraph test as a helpful instrument, while the so-called Ministry of Justice refuses to allow those claiming to be wrongfully convicted to use the same technology.
Few people would suggest that lie-detector machines are infallible, though their findings are admissible evidence in many countries.
Supporters of the machines point to a mass of data showing people failing the test and having their deceit later corroborated by other evidence.
Detractors say many governments, law enforcement agencies and private-sector companies really use polygraphs in the hope that they will frighten away liars and cheats.
Whatever the truth, if the machines are considered a useful tool by a department intent on nailing benefit cheats, how can they be ignored by the department charged with overseeing the dispensing of justice?
What is more important: people claiming a few quid a week more than they are entitled to or innocent prisoners, who have already rotted behind bars for years, continuing to do so for years to come?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2008/dec/04/socialexclusion-prisonsandprobation