When Tory MPs warn of threats to civil liberties, you know things have got quite bad: James Clappison, a senior member of the Commons home affairs committee, warned of "rushed justice" following this paper's revelation that the police had devised an on-the-hoof policy of refusing bail to anyone arrested on a riot-related offence.

This prisoner processing strategy (it is four pages long, but boils down to "don't let them out") was plain, but as yet undisclosed, on 10 August, in Westminster magistrates' court: I went along to see the first cases being processed overnight. The newsworthy person that night was Chelsea Ives, who combined phenomenal beauty, youth (she's 18), lawlessness (the allegations were of looting and damage to a police car), irony (she plays women's football at a high level, and was an Olympic ambassador, though the court wasn't told that on the night), along with a human interest dimension, since it was her mother who shopped her.

I wasn't surprised by the way she was portrayed in the tabloids, specifically in the Sun, even though the coverage glossed over facts that might have made people sympathise with her (someone from the parole service told that she was at risk of self-harm; Ives had beads of tears settling in the fake eyelashes that had been part of the "distinctive appearance" leading to police being able to identify her in the first place. The smart money would have been on removing them before she got to court, but I guess they were semi-permanent. She looked like a sad young woman who can't control her temper. But I know this isn't the time. I know 70% of people are in favour of harsher than usual sentencing for rioters. I know nobody's in the mood for a conversation about anger management).

What did surprise me, however, was how little coverage there was of the other cases that night. Journalists weren't allowed in the youth court, so these defendants were a little older than you might imagine, picturing a classic rioter. The first was a paranoid schizophrenic called Martin Burton, who had been caught stealing a mirror from a domestic property (there was a question mark over whether or not the resident was known to him); when his own residence was searched, he had an Oyster card not registered to him, and couldn't explain how he came about it. He was refused bail. He had nothing to do with the riots; it was just bad luck that he happened to be arrested on 7 August.

It's interesting to look back to Ken Clarke's speech last December, in which he spoke of big failings in the prison system, with specific reference to prisoners with mental illnesses: his promised "rehabilitation revolution" was, predominantly, a promise to treat the mentally ill rather than bang them up. And of those mentally ill prisoners, the headline group is paranoid schizophrenics, who account for 10% of the prison population and 1% of the general population.

Nobody (anymore) thinks that Clarke will be allowed to stick to his guns when David Cameron is under pressure. I merely bring this up because it is now an undisputed tenet of criminal justice: paranoid schizophrenics should, generally, not be in prison. And that being the case, should they be remanded in custody over the possession of an Oyster card not registered to them and the theft of a mirror? Would he have been remanded in custody in a different atmosphere?

The second case was sadder still. It featured Michael Alvin Watson, whose face was undulated with tumours. His body and feet were in the same condition. "But I won't ask him to remove his clothes," his counsel sensitively declared. His alleged crime – to which he pleaded not guilty – was riot-related: he was accused of poking his hand through a broken window and stealing cigarettes of "unknown value", but there was no suggestion he'd broken the window, or been part of the crowd that had looted the shop. His tumours were undiagnosed. He was in the middle of a course of drugs to gird his strength, at the end of which doctors would be able to do more exploratory work. He was homeless. I'm not sure what the medical term is: the layman's term is "completely fucked". He was refused bail.

This is what it looks like when processes are changed in a panic: not just a bunch of arrogant scofflaws, astonished to find society finally standing up to them; but also a luckless brigade, dealt yet more terrible luck, serving more time on remand than they would ever normally be sentenced to on conviction. This is what we're talking about, when we talk about getting tough.