42 days

And so our Parliament debates today on the wisdom of extending the detention period for 'terror suspects' to 48 days. Some polls seem to indicate that the people are all in favour of this extension, needless to say civil liberty groups aren't, but why not what's the problem?

We need to go through the process in its basic form - you are arrested, you may or may not be detained, you are charged, you are tried. Now the hassle from the point of view of the law is that once you're charged you can't be interviewed, this is why you have a detention period.

This detention period is used to obtain or secure evidence relating to the offence for which you've been arrested and is limited to 36 hours and 36 hour extensions can be obtained up to a maximum of 96 hours after which you have to be charged or released. That is unless you're a terror suspect in which case the detention period is 7 days, oops no 14 days, wait sorry 28 days, er maybe 48 days depending on when you're reading this.

Let's go back to the beginning of the process - you are arrested; why? You have been arrested because the officer suspects you have committed an arrestable offence, that you are currently committing an arrestable offence, or that you are about to commit an arrestable offence. the word "suspects" is important because it requires some modicum of evidence.

So an arrest has been made and the suspect placed in detention. The police can now question them about the offence for which they've been arrested. Let's use a bank robbery as an example, if it's after the offence the police may ask where the money is, who else was in on the job etc. During a crime, well it's pretty much bang to rights. Before a crime - why were you heading into the bank wearing a balaclava on a hot summer day?

So far so obvious, but the question has to be why do the police require more questioning time for 'terror suspects' over normal suspects? The answer seems to be twofold - firstly they're brought in more on the suspicion they're about to commit an offence rather than having done so or are in the middle of doing so. This is an obvious difficulty to paraphrase Pratchett - I arrested the man what done it, is much better then I arrested the man what looked like he was about to do it especially when asked to prove it. So you need the time to get the evidence, except hang on a sec this isn't like arresting the bank robbers as they charge towards the bank this is all who they've been talking to and what they've been reading and buying. So the amount of evidence that can be brought before a court at the point of arrest may well be non existent. In other words the officers are looking for enough evidence to charge you after you've been arrested, which is the wrong way around. Enough evidence for charge should already be available before arrest, remember the detention period is to secure or preserve evidence not go look for it.

Secondly it's to allow more time for questioning to unravel the plot and uncover any co-conspirators etc. Except that means the detention period becomes less about securing and preserving evidence by questioning about your offence, but about other peoples possible offences. Referring back to our bank robbery this would be similar to asking the suspect if they knew any other bank robbers who hadn't been caught yet, a request I strongly suspect would result in a "Don't answer that" from any competent lawyer and subsequent complaints.

So it appears the detention period for 'terror suspects' is to allow the police to do things that they wouldn't be allowed to do when dealing with ordinary suspects. Except why the difference, if you can do this for people arrested under terrorist offences why not for people arrested for other offences? Pretend that it appears that I'm fashioning a bomb - wallop I'm arrested as a terror suspect and held for up to 28 days, despite the fact I may just be planning to blow up a bank vault. So it's all down to intent as to how you're arrested and held, and that's a damn slippery slope to start down.