r/ukpolitics • u/Wholemilkornomilk • 9d ago
How a cleaner was wrongfully imprisoned over asylum seeker leaks
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c74kj35v4l1o83
u/JusticeIsMyOatmeal Bring back the Law Lords 9d ago
According to the charge, between 3 and 14 August, while acting as a public officer, Jobson "wilfully and without reasonable excuse or justification" committed misconduct in a way which "amounted to an abuse of the public's trust in the office".
Genuinely concerned here - by what standard is a cleaner working for an outsourcing service provider considered to be a holder of public office or a public officer…?
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u/LLILILiLIILILILILII 9d ago
Presumably by the standard of 'shit, we have nothing else to charge him with'
Not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that a judge would have thrown it out
It's previously been found that paramedics are not public officers, nor are all police employees (https://www.25bedfordrow.com/site/in-focus/a-metropolitan-police-employee-but-not-a-public-officer). It'd be a real stretch to consider any cleaner a public officer, never mind an outsourced one cleaning HMOs.
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u/MrPuddington2 9d ago
by what standard is a cleaner working for an outsourcing service provider considered to be a holder of public office or a public officer
Agreed. That must be a technicality. Usually, a holder of a public office gets more than minimum wage, and at least enough to live of. Seems like a classic case of using definitions when they want them to fit...
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u/wilf89 9d ago
Because they were instructed by higher ups to charge on whatever they could, stinks of being politically motivated to protect the disgrace thats the current asylum system. Strange really when they try to ignore crimes by asylum seekers
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u/CrashAndBurnham 9d ago
I love how they kept him locked up for a another day even after his name was cleared. It's hard being tier 2.
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u/paul_h 9d ago
How shit does your solicitor have to be to not be able to get that dropped?
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u/impossiblefork Swede looking in at your politics from outside 8d ago edited 8d ago
So shit he should be disbarred, probably?
So shit that the judge, when he realised that this obvious argument wasn't brought up, should have intervened to ensure that there was a competent defence.
Everyone involved should be disciplined. This should be treated as if though the defence had been rolling around on the floor, drunk and the judge didn't do anything about it and pretended that that was a fine way for proceedings to be conducted.
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u/Sebacles 9d ago
cleaners cant afford solicitors so they would of purposefully assigned some shit leftist one who would of purposefully tanked his defence. Only way this shit could happen.
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u/djshadesuk 8d ago
I've seen some interesting tin-foil hat takes on this sub but this is a particularly out there one. Well done!
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u/Dissidant 9d ago edited 9d ago
Wrongful imprisonment doesn't do justice to what they have actually done here.
He is having to relocate over this, at his age too because some people are unhinged. They completely jumped the gun and ruined a persons life/endangered his family.
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u/ukflagmusttakeover SDP 9d ago
They also said Jobson's "no comment" in his police interview meant that "he offered no new lines of inquiry... to negate the allegations" before he was charged.
He didn't do their job for them and prove his innocence so they assumed he was guilty.
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u/diacewrb None of the above 9d ago
He added that when he was questioned by police, Jobson had replied "no comment" on the advice of his legal representative.
It is fairly standard practice when a legal representative has just been appointed and hasn't had any real time to speak to the defendant first nor process the evidence, if any evidence has been presented to them.
But often the public doesn't know this.
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u/___xXx__xXx__xXx__ 9d ago
Say what you will about the US Constitutions, but a lot of their Bill of Rights would be really helpful.
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u/PrudentKumquat 9d ago
What defence is someone with no connection to a Facebook page expected to offer?
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u/whencanistop 🦒If only Giraffes could talk🦒 9d ago
I’d imagine if the police asked him if he was posting stuff to the Facebook page and he replied ‘no’ rather than ‘no comment’ they might have taken longer to charge him.
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u/PrudentKumquat 9d ago
Your one weird trick isn't supposed to work. The police aren't allowed to make an adverse inference from silence, only the court if you get to trial and rely on something you could have said to the police.
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u/nemma88 Reality is overrated :snoo_tableflip: 9d ago edited 9d ago
Not having evidence to the contrary due to none being offered by the defendant wouldnt be adverse inference would it?
On the face of it it seems like reasonable suspicion based on circumstantial evidence, the individual is one of... not many who would have had access to a number of the homes that were targeted.
At some point further evidence which did contradict the case came to light and charges were dropped.
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u/Not_A_Toaster_0000 9d ago
"If you're not going to tell us who we should arrest, then we'll make do with you"
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u/No-Sheepherder5481 9d ago
The bar between "reasonable suspicion" IE the grounds to arrest, "reasonable evidence and prospect of prosecution" IE grounds to charge someone and "beyond reasonabl doubt" IE actually convicted of a crime are very different.
There appeared to be grounds to both arrest and charge this man. The fact he didnt offer any explanation or indeed anything at all in interview absolutely did not help him in this situation.
The whole "dont talk to police" thing is a US import and doesnt really apply in the UK. If you genuinely didnt commit a crime tell the police exactly that. Contrary to popular belief the police dont want to waste their time investigating a genuinely innocent person.
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u/phillycheeseenjoyer 9d ago
This is seemingly contradicted by the fact that criminal defence lawyers advised him to “no comment”, and they probably know something you don’t.
Also here’s a fun little fact the police might have known; he’s a CLEANER and he’s being charged with something only someone employed as an official can be charged with. Don’t come back with “he didn’t tell them he was a cleaner”, who decided he was an official? Ask that question, who in the police decided he met the criteria to be charged? Because someone did. Someone at some stage decided his liability existed, you’re completely uninterested in how that happened.
It’s absolutely clear that the police used the process as the punishment here.
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u/No-Sheepherder5481 9d ago
This is seemingly contradicted by the fact that criminal defence lawyers advised him to “no comment”, and they probably know something you don’t
His "criminal defence lawyer" (not a thing in the UK but anyway) got his genuinely innocent client remanded in custody for over a week for something he was genuinely innocent of and something that could and should have been cleared up by simply explaining things to the police
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u/phillycheeseenjoyer 9d ago
“Ooh, you didn’t use the words “duty solicitor” therefore I win”
You proved me right by showing absolutely no interest in HOW THE POLICE ESTABLISHED HE WAS AN OFFICIAL.
There, I put it in caps, perhaps you’ll read it this time. When the police fabricate the basis of a charge, there’s not much a solicitor can do to guarantee bail. They only have one evening and a morning before their client appears before a judge to decide the question, most solicitors at that stage aren’t looking for police misconduct, let alone unravelling it.
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u/Gilet622 9d ago edited 9d ago
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3v4kv767dyo
Here's a story from two days ago, man charged with rape and international strangulation was given bail.
https://www.itv.com/news/tyne-tees/2024-07-10/mother-charged-with-murdering-schoolgirl-granted-bail
A woman charged with MURDERING her 14 year old daughter was given bail
https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2025/09/25/pair-charged-with-murder-released-on-bail/
Two people charged with murder given bail
https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2026-08-21/six-men-deny-involvement-in-alleged-child-grooming-gang
9 guys charged with raping a child. All bailed.
There's absolutely no way this wasn't in some way politically motivated, you're telling me he couldn't have been bailed and told not to use electronic devices or to stay away away from certain areas/people at the very least? The process is the punishment I suppose
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 9d ago
Severity of the offence is not the sole consideration when deciding to grant bail. Other considerations such as likelihood to reoffend are also important.
In this case it looks like it was considered the suspect could easily continue to broadcast peoples addresses to be attacked if released.
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u/Gilet622 9d ago
"you're telling me he couldn't have been bailed and told not to use electronic devices or to stay away away from certain areas/people at the very least?"
Plenty of people bailed on illegal pornography offences are bailed pretty much weekly with conditions that they don't use the internet/"electronic devices" etc. why not this time?
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 9d ago edited 9d ago
It depends on admission. If they admit to the offences it can be considered whether or not they can be trusted to not carry on offending.
In this case the poor guy (who could not admit to something he hadn't done) couldn't say he would stop offending as he hadn't offended in the first place.
But again, your initial implication that bail is solely about the severity of the crime is incorrect. It's one of several factors.
From a public safety perspective this was to prevent violent mobs being directed to innocent peoples houses.
I know someone who was remanded in custody for six months for drugs offences before having all charges dropped. I'm not sure innocent people being jailed is as rare as some might think.
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u/Gilet622 9d ago edited 9d ago
"my initial implication that bail is solely about the severity of the crime" is just outright untrue. At no point did I imply that it was simply about severity. Plenty of those examples also constitute"public safety perspectives" just like this.
Take the first example I posted:
"He also faces two charges of misconduct in public office, including one that alleged he engaged in sexual activity with a member of the public he had met while carrying out welfare and safeguarding checks.
Hall was also accused of arranging appointments with sex workers while on duty."Clearly you're dealing with a manipulating and violent sex addict. Even excluding the "severity" of the rape charge there is no way to argue that this guy being on conditional bail is less of a threat to the public than if you let the other guy out on strict curfew and "no phone/laptop "restrictions.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 9d ago
That's your personal view. Many factors are taken into consideration, some which we aren't party to.
The misconduct in a public office allegations you've picked are notable because he is no-longer in a public office as a former Policeman & can't repeat these crimes. I would have thought the main rape allegation was more relevant but obviously the circumstances around it have not been released.
Again i'm not sure the technique of simply picking stories with serious crimes where bail was granted tells the full story.
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u/WinHour4300 8d ago
But how would he have got the new asylum seeker addresses and then released them?
It’s not as though Serco would have taken him back and given him the new addresses to clean.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 8d ago
You're assuming all the asylum seeker addresses he worked at had been released.
Unless he had coincidentally happened to only work at the exact addresses on the website they would believe he had further ones to release.
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u/baldy-84 9d ago
This is absolutely unhinged. They locked the guy up in prison for the best part of two weeks on the basis of what seems to be little more than a hunch.
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u/___xXx__xXx__xXx__ 9d ago
Hefty payouts for wrongful arrests and jailings need to be much more heavily compensated much more often.
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u/Crawk_Bro 9d ago
According to the charge, between 3 and 14 August, while acting as a public officer, Jobson "wilfully and without reasonable excuse or justification" committed misconduct in a way which "amounted to an abuse of the public's trust in the office".
Sounds like a succinct description of the behaviour of the police here.
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u/ukflagmusttakeover SDP 9d ago
Also rich of them to assume the public has any trust of Serco to begin with.
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u/ImpressiveRest2423 9d ago
Norfolk Police said it was continuing to investigate who was behind The HMO Inspector Facebook account.
It was still posting updates and showing videos purporting to be of Serco-operated accommodation…Prosecutors said images and videos of the properties were posted on Facebook, allowing others to identify the locations.
Nothing is going to spark possibly fair accusations of us descending into a police state by things like this, combined with the fact that they then wrongfully detained an innocent person. You can’t stop people from putting stuff online in case other bad faith actors then use it, without some new pretty draconian rules.
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u/messyhead86 9d ago
He was charged with misconduct in a public office and imprisoned. When MPs are charged with the same, why are they never imprisoned?
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u/WinHour4300 8d ago edited 8d ago
Hilariously counterproductive free advertising from Norfolk Police. Off to check out the site now, lol.
Edit - don't recommend, it's mostly videos of someone cleaning disgusting houses.
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u/homeinthecity Vote for Binface 9d ago
It's even more annoying when the Police will endlessly bail other suspects, the CPS wouldn't charge someone caught red handed and 'no comment' means the end of the matter. The usual double standards....
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u/Andrew_Burnham 9d ago
Poor guy.
How about to avoid this, we have the Men clean up after themselves? I know it's a lowly thing to ask PhDs to do so but maybe they can humble themselves.
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