It is common to read in crime fiction about police informants being given light sentences by judges after a few words with police officers. But does this really happen? Ian Rankin discusses this popular belief with Ian Mitchell.

In Let It Bleed, one of Ian Rankin’s long series of very successful novels about the Edinburgh detective John Rebus, there is a character, known as ‘Wee Shug’ McAnally, who was given a lenient sentence for raping a neighbour of one of the principal characters. It turned out that Wee Shug was an informer and an important aspect of the book’s plot revolves around information which the police were given by Wee Shug while he was serving his shorter-than-normal sentence. But how did Wee Shug get so short a sentence?
Rebus mulled this question over and came to the conclusion that the answer was “something he didn’t want to think.” What was that?
There was only one good reason he could think of why Wee Shug had been so lucky; one good reason why a judge might be so lenient time and time again.
Someone had put in a word.
And who was it who usually put in a word with the judge? Answer: policemen.
Ian Rankin is not alone in this view. In his book Fallen Gods, Quintin Jardine makes a similar assumption. His hero, Bob Skinner, has influence with the judges, though in this case it is not even for the ‘noble cause’ of police information gathering.
“[Skinner] wasn’t just doing his job when he put in a word to get me a standard lifer’s tariff,” Lenny said. “Any other copper, you included, would have left me here to rot, doing a minimum of 30 years. So how can I help him?”
I am not aware of any research exploring the Scottish public’s attitude towards this sort of judicial corruption, but I think it is reasonable to assume that such popular writers as Rankin and Jardine reflect widely-held views. I therefore asked Ian Rankin recently whether he thought that police influence over judges was real, or whether he was using it simply as a plot device which he considered as fictional as Rebus himself.
“Do police talk to lawyers and judges about what should happen to someone?” Rankin said. “Yes, that must go on. If they don’t meet formally, they meet informally, at various dinners and what have you. The police do have informers on their books who they’d be very keen not to see put inside. So they’d have a word with somebody to try to make sure that the sentence is as lenient as possible. It just makes sense to me rationally that that would happen.”
I asked what evidence he had for this surprising assertion.
“I’ve no evidence,” Rankin replied. “It just seems to me rational that that would happen, that the forces of law and order would trade information, or make sure that information was available, to help out their friends, people who are helping the police.”
I asked in what sort of circumstances he thought policemen and judges might meet.
“If the case has gone up the ranks to a fairly senior police officer, they would be meeting at Law Society dinners; they’d be meeting at dinners at Fettes; they’d be meeting when Princess Anne comes to town to congratulate Lothian and Borders on their anniversary. There are all kinds of inter-disciplinary places where they could meet. They’d be meeting in the New Club, perhaps. Do you not think the Assistant Chief Constable, the Deputy Chief Constable and the Chief Constable would be in the New Club?”
Rankin, an extremely likeable interviewee, was honest enough to tell me that he had only once ever stepped inside the New Club building. So it is perhaps understandable that he does not realise the place is not only not full of senior policemen, but is also pretty light on judges these days. Most of them are too busy to lunch off-site.
I asked a prominent judge what he thought of Rankin’s words in Let It Bleed.
“Rubbish,” he said. “Absolute rubbish. It doesn’t happen. We would be outraged if anything like that happened. Any judge or sheriff I know would be furious if any attempt was made to nobble him like that. I had a case in which a member of the clerking service, it seemed to me, was trying to influence me. I was outraged. He was subsequently disciplined for it. He was a very dodgy guy and he should have been fired long before then. His boss said he didn’t know he was doing wrong. But this is something we are very strong on. You cannot come to a judgement on anything that you have not heard in court, or was not referred to in court. As soon as it became clear to anyone that you were influenced by anything extraneous then the whole judgement would come under attack. We’re very hot on that.”
So, I suggested, Ian Rankin should be disciplined by the Faculty of Authors?
“It’s freedom of speech,” the judge said. “He can write what he likes. But the truth is that we maintain a distance from the police. It is a great benefit to us to be able to say I’ve got to keep my distance from you.”
Another senior judge put a different view to me.
“The police, I think, are very keen on this notion that someone who has been a useful informer should be in some way dealt with more favourably because of that. I can’t quite see why someone who is only doing what is the duty of any citizen should get a benefit when it comes to being sentenced for whatever else he has been doing. I cannot see why that is something I should take into account when sentencing him unless it was something which showed a degree of reformed character or something like that. Simply because he had been a snitch would not have any affect on sentence.”
I asked if there were any circumstances at all in which the police might justifiably ‘have a word’ with a judge?
“Absolutely none. There is no prospect of the police having a word with a judge. None whatsoever. If any policeman tried to talk to a judge, that judge would be quite likely to call another policeman to have him removed. It is just not possible. Ian Rankin’s understanding of how the legal system works is rudimentary. People do have an impression of the legal system as a whole as being like that, and of course it is perpetuated by this kind of garbage. Really what he is saying is that judges are corrupt. That is what he is saying, there is no two ways about it. It is just not done like that. I cannot even imagine how a police officer would ever get into a situation of having a word with a judge.”
“In the New Club, he says.”
“The New Club, of course, is crawling with police officers!”
“Do you think Ian Rankin might not be transferring an English prejudice about whispered words in clubland to the Scottish system?” I asked.
“Yes, definitely,” the judge replied. “Also, you used to have a more direct role of the police in the prosecution in England than we have ever had here. Years ago you would have the same police officer presenting cases in the lower courts and instructing barristers who went on to become judges. In Scotland there is a total separation. The police only appear in court as witnesses. I don’t think I have spoken to a police officer in my entire life in a professional capacity.”
Another judge, now retired, told me that in 20 years on the bench he had never once been approached by a police officer. I asked if it worried him seeing this sort of misleading material about the Scottish judiciary in print.
“Not particularly,” he said. “If I watch a play on television they almost certainly will not know how to dress the judge; they use the English style. They have the counsel dressed as English counsel in a Scottish case. If you look at the original film of Greyfriar’s Bobby, it was total nonsense the way they presented the judge. But it’s typical. They are so ignorant they don’t even know they are ignorant. There is a tremendous lack of observation. Jeffrey Archer wrote a book some years ago which involved the Scottish legal world. Almost everything he said about it was wrong. It doesn’t matter if it is Jeffrey Archer or Ian Rankin, there’s going to be errors in it. I almost expect it. So, no, it doesn’t worry me.”
Ironically, it almost seems to worry Ian Rankin who generously said, “Judges are in a no-win situation. If they appear in the media it is only because they have given someone what others think is an audaciously light sentence. It is never for doing a quiet, good job. That is not news.”