Crime and criminals

[Hugo]

It's a very emotive subject and I can understand why the Government would not want a referendum on the matter as I believe that there would only be one outcome.
The death penalty is unsavoury to many but so is murder, especially in cases like Lee Rigby's.     The murderers were filmed doing it and in Court they had the audacity to plead not guilty to the charge.
The Police officers who attended the scene shot and wounded the two murderers but what I can't understand is how trained firearm experts did not shoot to kill as their own lives and members of the public were in danger.

[Ian]

I could hazard a guess...

[Fester]

Nah, I disagree B2R.
There is a tiny, tiny chance a miscarriage of justice could happen get me killed.
But there is a world, full of prisons, bursting with murderers.... and others at large waiting to commit the crime.
They need sorting out, so I'm happy to take my chances.

You genuinely sound like a middle eastern dictator now.
What if it was your innocent son or daughter that was wrongly killed by the government, would that be fine then?
Because "for the greater good" this process will ultimately kill more bad people than good.

Yes B2R, that's exactly what I think, you've hit the nail on the head.

[Bosun]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-41097183

A sentence of four years and four months for killing a 65 year old man in an unprovoked attack.

No-one can seriously call that justice, let alone a deterrent.

Can anyone wonder why I have absolutely no confidence in the criminal justice system.

[Ian]

But once again we can only guess at the real story. But if we examine the facts they paint a slightly different picture.

The assailant was very drunk and had consumed an entire bottle of vodka. That doesn't excuse what happened but I suspect everyone reading this will have encountered drunks and know how they can do something like that completely without warning.

It was a single punch. And the victim died from striking his head on the pavement. He was 65, although to me he looked significantly older, and he was taken completely by surprise.

So the court was faced with a teenage drunk (not that rare in Merseyside) whose naturally aggressive instincts had been unchained by the effects of alcohol (again, not that rare in Merseyside) who didn't intend to kill the victim, otherwise he'd have done something other than land a single punch.

Given all that, and we know nothing about the assailant's upbringing, which might have been pretty dire (not that rare in Merseyside...) and the assailant's age (technically, he was a child in the eyes of the law) what would you have the courts do? 17-year-olds make mistakes and, in this case, it was a fatal mistake.

The sentence can be appealed, of course, but the defence can argue that the death was caused directly by the victim's collision with the pavement and not the punch.

Of course, it makes for a good story, and that's what sells papers and hence ups the revenue of the media owners. But if we can be dispassionate about the case, what were the options?

[born2run]

Some may think it surprising but I'm entirely with Bosun here not Ian.
No amount of bad upbringing or vodka should give you any credence to attack a complete stranger.
If they had known each other and had an altercation that would be different. Even robbery would have some mitigation but this was an act of mindless violence.

What's worse is that if the victim hadn't died you'd be lucky if this lad would be punished at all.

The law is a joke, it should be 5 years in prison whether the person he attacked was injured or not.
If you're unfortunate enough that your victim dies as a direct result of that attack....bad luck.
Life in prison. Which is still nowhere near as much bad luck as the victim and his family have suffered.

[Ian]

The law is a joke, it should be 5 years in prison whether the person he attacked was injured or not.
If you're unfortunate enough that your victim dies as a direct result of that attack....bad luck.
Life in prison. Which is still nowhere near as much bad luck as the victim and his family have suffered.

So you're saying anyone who attacks someone else without apparent provocation should get five years in jail?  We'd have to build a lot more prisons, then, and we already lock up a higher percentage of our population than any other European country.

I'm not saying alcohol excuses the attack in any way. It doesn't, and the assailant deserves punishing.  But if you're suggesting what it seems you are - same sentence for anyone attacking someone else - then I'm not sure how you expect the law to act as a deterrent.

The simple fact is that prison doesn't work. If it did, why are there such high rates of re-offending?

[Bosun]

This woman and her husband were recently working as cleaners in the Deganwy and Conwy area.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-41106320

[born2run]

The law is a joke, it should be 5 years in prison whether the person he attacked was injured or not.
If you're unfortunate enough that your victim dies as a direct result of that attack....bad luck.
Life in prison. Which is still nowhere near as much bad luck as the victim and his family have suffered.

So you're saying anyone who attacks someone else without apparent provocation should get five years in jail?  We'd have to build a lot more prisons, then, and we already lock up a higher percentage of our population than any other European country.

I'm not saying alcohol excuses the attack in any way. It doesn't, and the assailant deserves punishing.  But if you're suggesting what it seems you are - same sentence for anyone attacking someone else - then I'm not sure how you expect the law to act as a deterrent.

The simple fact is that prison doesn't work. If it did, why are there such high rates of re-offending?

Not apparent provocation I mean 'any' provocation.  ie this lad just walked up and attacked him out of the blue. I don't think that happens a lot there is normally some kind of confrontation first. But the bottom line is people should be free to walk down the street without expecting to be attacked and those do this should expect to be dealt with severely.

[Bosun]

The law is a joke, it should be 5 years in prison whether the person he attacked was injured or not.
If you're unfortunate enough that your victim dies as a direct result of that attack....bad luck.
Life in prison. Which is still nowhere near as much bad luck as the victim and his family have suffered.

So you're saying anyone who attacks someone else without apparent provocation should get five years in jail?  We'd have to build a lot more prisons, then, and we already lock up a higher percentage of our population than any other European country.

I'm not saying alcohol excuses the attack in any way. It doesn't, and the assailant deserves punishing.  But if you're suggesting what it seems you are - same sentence for anyone attacking someone else - then I'm not sure how you expect the law to act as a deterrent.

The simple fact is that prison doesn't work. If it did, why are there such high rates of re-offending?

Not apparent provocation I mean 'any' provocation.  ie this lad just walked up and attacked him out of the blue. I don't think that happens a lot there is normally some kind of confrontation first. But the bottom line is people should be free to walk down the street without expecting to be attacked and those do this should expect to be dealt with severely.

This was not a situation where we have to 'examine the facts' to determine the truth behind the headlines; this was simply utter thuggery that killed an innocent man. There is no conceivable 'reasonable excuse' or defence.

The sentence was, under any rationale, ludicrously short. He will be out in two years.  Is that supposed to reassure society that the CJS is protecting us?

[Ian]

Anyone guilty of manslaughter or murder remains, I believe, on license for the rest of their lives. So I would assume he'll be closely monitored.

But to an extent you're right; horrendous acts of violence and thuggery do occur and the perpetrators are usually caught and punished but after, of course, they've done the deed. So these things will continue to happen and people will demand appropriate sentences.  The question I'm asking, however, is fairly simple: do you seriously believe that the next 17-year-old to get blind drunk will be deterred from throwing a single punch by a harsher sentence given to this individual? Because if you don't then why give much harsher sentences?

The CJS is reactive not proactive. For too long we've simply been throwing people in prison after the event instead of working on ways to deter the crimes from ever happening. There are almost certainly reasons why some people turn out to be criminal thugs and why most people turn out to be decent individuals. Perhaps if we spent a fraction of the prison budget on pre-criminal interventions we might make some progress,

[born2run]

Anyone guilty of manslaughter or murder remains, I believe, on license for the rest of their lives. So I would assume he'll be closely monitored.

  The question I'm asking, however, is fairly simple: do you seriously believe that the next 17-year-old to get blind drunk will be deterred from throwing a single punch by a harsher sentence given to this individual? Because if you don't then why give much harsher sentences?

No.

Because a prison sentence also serves as a punishment to the previous crime rather than solely a deterrent for future crimes. If we only did it your way then we wouldn't ever sentence anyone who does a crime by accident.
Eg - falling asleep behind the wheel, nobody means to fall asleep in a car, a man isn't going to be driving down a motorway think "I really feel like a nap but better not take one right here whilst I'm going 70mph because the last bloke who did that go 5 years"

You will probably say, but it may deter people from driving too long without taking rest periods, to which I would say
the consequences of falling asleep and killing himself are much worse than the consequences of his prison sentence should he survive the crash.  So it rules that out.

[Hugo]

Does the punishment fit the crime in this one?       


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-41106320

[Ian]

  The question I'm asking, however, is fairly simple: do you seriously believe that the next 17-year-old to get blind drunk will be deterred from throwing a single punch by a harsher sentence given to this individual? Because if you don't then why give much harsher sentences?

No.

Because a prison sentence also serves as a punishment to the previous crime rather than solely a deterrent for future crimes. If we only did it your way then we wouldn't ever sentence anyone who does a crime by accident.

I think you can be negligent and thus break the law through failing in your duty, but that's different to actively committing a crime. And in the case we're discussing the perpetrator did actively commit a crime: drunk in a public place, GBH, failing to report an accident and manslaughter, so he obviously needed a custodial sentence.

But I never claimed to have any answers: just a lot of questions, evoked mainly by seeing how the CJS in the UK simply doesn't seem to work. On that we agree;  we simply differ on the best way of addressing it.

If locking people up worked there'd be far lower rates of recidivism. There aren't so it doesn't. We spend a huge amount of taxpayers' money on the CJS in the locking up bit, but almost none of the preventative bit. Wouldn't it make more sense to try and prevent crime?

[Fester]

Some may think it surprising but I'm entirely with Bosun here not Ian.
No amount of bad upbringing or vodka should give you any credence to attack a complete stranger.
If they had known each other and had an altercation that would be different. Even robbery would have some mitigation but this was an act of mindless violence.

What's worse is that if the victim hadn't died you'd be lucky if this lad would be punished at all.

The law is a joke, it should be 5 years in prison whether the person he attacked was injured or not.
If you're unfortunate enough that your victim dies as a direct result of that attack....bad luck.
Life in prison. Which is still nowhere near as much bad luck as the victim and his family have suffered.

So, finally, you're coming around to my way of thinking.
The points system, its the only way.
You know it makes sense.