Sam Hallam’s going to have to pay the government bed and board
I’LL guarantee you in a day or two you’re going to be seeing pieces shouting about how unfair it is that Sam Hallam, unfairly convicted and now released, will have to be paying bed and board for the time he was in prison.
The fact of the matter is that he won’t: but that won’t stop people saying he will.
What will happen is that he’s be due compensation: it’s how that compensation is calculated that allows the charge of being made to pay for bed and board.
The standard common law calculation of compensation (and this is for anything, not just being unfairly jugged) is that the cash paid over should, as much as is humanly possible, make things as they would have been without the mistake. So, someone who was earning £100k a year before being locked up would get more in lost wages than someone earning £20k a year. Maybe that’s fair and maybe it isn’t but that’s the way it is.
They also look at the expenses you would have had if you were not locked up. So, you would have had to buy food, rent somewhere to sleep. In order to make things as they would have been without the mistake these things you didn’t have to spend should be deducted from the compensation you get. As an example, you were earning £20k a year, you would have spent £5k on food and rent (and they do take into account that prison food and a prison cell are right at the cheap shitty end of the market) so your net earnings would have been £15k. You were in for 7 years so you get 7×15= £105k.
This is before any damages you get for the police being lying bastards and all the rest.
He’s not being charged bed and board in prison: his compensation is being reduced by the bed and board he didn’t have to buy outside prison.
Photo: Sam Hallam, 24, leaving the Court of Appeal in London, with his mother Wendy Cohen, after he was freed on bail after the prosecution announced it was not opposing his appeal against his conviction for the murder of trainee chef Essayas Kassahun, 21, who died after being attacked by a group of youths on the St Luke’s estate in Clerkenwell, London, in October 2004.
Posted: 17th, May 2012 | In: Money Comments (6) | TrackBack | Permalink
