We can’t have a situation where those found guilty try to take the upper hand and control their last appearance
Published 24th Oct 2026, 05:00 BST
The family of Zara Allena wanted justice. Their daughter had been murdered by Jordan Sweeney, a prolific offender who attacked the aspiring lawyer and beat her to death on her way home after a night out.
However Zara’s family didn’t get to see Sweeney’s expression when he was sentenced to 38 years in jail because he refused to leave the cells to appear in the dock. Usually this would pass without comment but not this time. “The defendant’s decision not to come up from the cells to the court shows that the man who took Zara’s life has no spine whatsoever” said the clearly frustrated judge.
She’d had enough of criminals manipulating the court and now it seems so has the UK government. From next year, prisoners could be blocked from prison visits and confined to their cells for weeks on end if they do not follow orders to go to court in England and Wales.
The move was welcomed by Zara Aleen’s aunt who said it would help ‘rebalance the power” and make up for a situation that “left a sense that justice was not quite complete”..
That’s really important. I’ll never forget being in Newcastle Crown Court on May 19th 1994 when serial child killer Robert Black was sentenced for the murder of three little girls. He is the closest I’ve ever been to evil. It surrounded and consumed him. Relatives of some of the girls were in court to see Black sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term to be served of 35 years.
Afterwards they told me of the relief they felt watching him being taken down to the cells to start what would effectively be a death sentence. Black died in prison ten years ago. His ashes were scattered at sea.
The courts are supposed to be dignified venues for justice. Everyone stands when the judge enters, the lawyers wear formal attire and the language is measured and solemn.
The dignity of the court would not be well served by recalcitrant offenders being bound and gagged and dragged up screaming from the cells to be sentenced. That’s not helping anyone.
But we can’t have a situation where those found guilty try to take the upper hand and control their last appearance before the court without any consequences.
Shyster lawyers and misplaced concerns about the impact on the human rights of the prisoner have led to a situation where more and more criminals are opting to sit downstairs in the cells watching Channel 4 racing while broken families of victims wait upstairs denied restorative justice.
That can’t be right. Taking privileges like prison visits away might nudge some to do the right thing but a bolder move would be to slap an automatic two year contempt of court penalty on anyone convicted of a serious crime who refuses to return to the dock for sentencing.
Fundamentally , all these individuals have something in common. They are weak cowards, too scared to face up to what they did while at the same time trying to make one last attempt to control the narrative of the process.
If justice is about one thing it is showing that actions have consequences and an additional sentence for those who refuse to appear before the court is the perfect way to prove that.