BS: Suitable sentencing

Subject: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 06:16 PM

Just watched a programme in which the singer formerly known as Boy George was given a court sentence of a public dressing down in America.
He was ordered to brush the streets.

Why can't the same be done over here ? Every week my local paper reports on scum who steal cars, rob pensioners and throw bottles at passing cars. Their sentence is a community service order. This includes feeding the goats in a local park, attending Whitewater Farm in the Mourne mountains to learn Mountain climbing, sailing, canoeing, paragliding and mountain biking.

There is rarely a week goes by when you read in the press about a weed called Pete Doherty of the pop group Babyshambles gets his last warning from a judge, how many warnings has he got ?

I understand there is a shortage of prisons, but the law needs to ignore the do gooders and make a sentence something these anti social scum never want to face again.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 06:32 PM

Ah Docherty has just started a short sentence of marriage to Kate Moss Divis, so that's him got what he deserves eh?
G ☻

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 06:36 PM

Giok, I think we will read some morning about him being found in a flat dead with a needle in his arm. She has to be as bad as him. Never noticed what some people tend to see in her, average looking girl.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 06:41 PM

I would think it quite likely that Community Service Orders incude stuff like sweeping as the streets, along with the various other useful bits of work which I know are used. Newspapers generally aren't interested in stuff like that.

And Community Service Orders as such do not include stuff like "mountain climbing, sailing, canoeing, paragliding and mountain biking."   If the press say they do, they've got them mixed up with something else.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 06:52 PM

A young guy who lives in my town has a record the length of your arm. He has been in the courts a lot over the past few years. Some friends of my son was telling me he was only back from the Mournes where we attended a camp as part of his sentence, this included the activities I listed. Recently on the BBC Northern Ireland news they featured a course currently underway for so called "joy riders" who appeared before the courts. They attended a rally driving course at Nutts Corner, a disused airfield and were given a beginners course in mechanics. FACT.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: bobad
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 06:54 PM

"Never noticed what some people tend to see in her, average looking girl."

It's the heroin chic look that seems to be de rigeur for fashion models these days, and she has it in spades.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 06:59 PM

Your right, One of the papers said she was the most wonderful legs. Sure their the first thing you throw out of the way.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 07:02 PM

But none of this would not have been under a Community Service Order. Community Service Orders always involve doing some kind of work, like the sentence Boy George got.

Courts sometimes make other kinds of orders the aim of which is to reduce the likelihood of re-offending. No doubt they sometimes get it wrong. I suspect they get it right more often.

Teaching someone who is mad keen enough on motors to steal them basic mechanics might be a good idea. It might be a first step towards holding down a useful job.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 07:03 PM

But none of this would have been under a Community Service Order. Community Service Orders always involve doing some kind of work, like the sentence Boy George got.

Courts sometimes make other kinds of orders the aim of which is to reduce the likelihood of re-offending. No doubt they sometimes get it wrong. I suspect they get it right more often.

Teaching someone who is mad keen enough on motors to steal them basic mechanics might be a good idea. It might be a first step towards holding down a useful job

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 07:09 PM

I agree with the idea and intent, but unfortunately there are those who would argue that it takes employment away from union members; or that it is too much like the chain gang mentality, and that there are not enough supervisors to make sure the work is being done anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Becca72
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 07:28 PM

Boy George only got the sentence he did (picking up trash in a public park, I believe) because he never bothered to show up for his first round of community service and that pissed off the judge. Might be a good idea to have started off with the garbage duty and gotten worse from there. Or else give every case to that particular judge...

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: skipy
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 07:38 PM

It is hard to steal a second car if you hands have been cut off for stealing the first!
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: kendall
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 07:38 PM

I don't know how it is in the UK, but here a defendant's prior violations and convictions are not evidence in the current case, and his record can not be brought up.
However, in some cases the judge will ask the prosecutor about his rap sheet and he/she can use that in sentencing.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 07:39 PM

I think they thought it would humiliate and break him. The New York Post reporters tried their best. What they hadn't envisaged was that the UK press took it so light heartedly and the public on the whole adore him anyway and his spirit is huge.

Like he said his mother was a cleaner and his father was a builder so he was never going to think this 'punishment' was beneath him.

One of our nicest eccentrics in the best way possible. Long may he wield his wit.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 09:08 PM

Kendall commented:

I don't know how it is in the UK, but here a defendant's prior violations and convictions are not evidence in the current case, and his record can not be brought up.

Kendall, you've got part of it, but not the whole story.

A defendant's prior history is not evidence in the TRIAL of the case; right. A man who has been convicted of DUI might not have been drinking on THIS occasion. A man who has run red lights might not have done it THIS time.

But when it gets down to disposition (sentencing), his history is emphatically relevant, and proper to consider. It's a completely different use of the information.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Oct 06 - 09:31 PM

That's how it works in the UK too. (Except where the defendangt does something that might justify bringing in the record. For example saying "I have never been in trouble before.")

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Gurney
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 03:15 AM

Nowt changes, wherever you go. In NZ a couple of months ago, a young offender owing some thousands in unpaid fines, mostly for motoring offences, had the fines quashed in court, on the grounds that he would never be able to pay them.
"He needs a fresh start."

I'm sure he got the message.

If you happen to be an established homeowner, just try defending your property from some criminal. The police are down on you like a ton of bricks.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Tootler
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 04:24 AM

That's how it works in the UK too.

Happened recently in a child rape case. A six year old girl was abducted from her bath, raped and left naked on the street near her home.

The accused had a previous conviction for a similar case which the judge ordered to be revealed to the jury, presumably because he had denied ever being in trouble before.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Grab
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 06:01 AM

the law needs to ignore the do gooders and make a sentence something these anti social scum never want to face again

Yeah, cos locking them all up in the society of other people who can teach them how to be better criminals works *so* well. Making prisons disgusting places worked *so* well back in Victorian (and pre-Victorian) times. And deterrence with corporal and capital punishment and transportation stopped *so* many criminals. Right?

I'm up for street-sweeping or other similar cleanup work to be done by people arrested for being drunk and disorderly or littering - punishment fitting the crime, and all that. But there's a big difference between punishment for doing something stupid, and rehabilitation because in all your life with your family and friends you've never known anything other than what you've been doing, or retraining to be able to hold down a job on the outside because you've never had a proper education.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST,SJ about to leave the Mill and go for a lie
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 07:23 AM

But locking them up DOES prevent them from re-offending while they're inside, Graham.

There's way, way, WAY too much consideration (and money provided by MY F**KING TAXES) given to the rights of evil twats, and nowhere near enough to the rights of people like me who behave themselves. IMHO!

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 09:53 AM

"a young offender owing some thousands in unpaid fines, mostly for motoring offences, had the fines quashed in court, on the grounds that he would never be able to pay them."
And yet students are made to pay back their loans from the wages of their first jobs (provided their wages are over a certain amount).

An actress researching for a role she's about to play commented on the life of sex offenders in prison. She was an abuse victim herself and is stunned that these offenders are being punished by watching Sky TV (yeah, OK, that's a justified punishent), playing pool and generally having a cushy time in carpeted luxury.

Give them Sky TV by all means, but tune it to the Crafters Corner channel, or Discovery....

The man who beat me up twice and fractured my skull got a £400 fine. I got £50, migraines, neuro and other medical problems, still being sorted 18 years after the original injuries. 6 months of watching someone make decoupage and knitting scarves from dog hairs would be a fitting punishment for him.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 10:47 AM

Bring back rock breaking.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 10:50 AM

I think they should all have to adopt Maddona and pay Bono's taxes.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Midchuck
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 01:15 PM

Remember that most crimes are committed by people who have already been in jail or prison.

If you look at it solely from a statistical standpoint, a prison sentence increases the probability that a given offender will commit additional crimes.

Granted, he won't commit any more crimes while he's on the inside, except against other inmates. But you can't give everyone life, so you got to figure out something that has some real chance of turning them around.

I don't know what that is, either.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 01:29 PM

If the effect of a penalty is to turn a silly young man into a career criminal, that's not very sensible, even if it goes down well in the tabloids.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Paul Burke
Date: 18 Oct 06 - 01:39 PM

It's very tempting to scream and shout, lock 'em up forever, whip them, torture them, castrate them, exterminate their extended families, but it won't help. It's been tried before, for hundreds of years, and in fact we aren't doing TOO badly at the moment- most crime is petty, violent crime is well down if you discount drug gang warfare.

As one whose car was broken into only last week, I'm not gazing down from the safety of a gated community of ivory towers. But when things don't work, find something else that does.

One problem is that the old automatic respect for people, which was unsustainable, has been replaced by a suspicion of all community consciousness. That's at least partly because society itself doesn't want social and community awareness when it gets in the way of the elite getting their privileges. So trades unionism, one of the main organisations of social solidarity of older generations, is crippled. Mass advertising promotes a rampantly individualistic view of society, even to the point where public transport, the health services, social housing, library and sprts services, and other state or local authority provided community facilities are considered as merely something that can't YET turn into a business opportunity for their cronies.

If people are criminal, look to yourself and your neighbours and the country to see why. Look to the REAL lessons that children are taught. That cheating is OK if you aren't caught, every time their parent gets away with illegal parking or uses the speed camera detector in the car. That it's OK to bully, that's what the head does to the staff. That you can steal, as long as you do it legally. that you can take drugs, as long as they come from a bottle bought in the supermarket. And that the people who really get on in society don't obey the rules that your decent poor parents obey.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Grab
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 05:32 AM

But locking them up DOES prevent them from re-offending while they're inside, Graham

Sure, but unless you're going to keep them inside for the rest of their natural, you're screwed.

For pathological criminals - serial sex offenders being the main category I can think of - there certainly is a strong argument for keeping them locked up for the rest of their lives to protect us from them. But most criminals - people locked up for theft, violence or criminal damage, and a *very* large minority of that related to drugs or alcohol - aren't that way.

Look at it from a cost-benefit viewpoint. Some druggie dropout kid is banged up for housebreaking and gets maybe 2 years. Options are:

(a) Lock him in a hole with a thousand other druggies, with easy access to dope, so that he can learn how to be a better criminal. No other teaching provided, so his only option for feeding his habit is to go back to turning over people's houses. Re-arrested after maybe a year, having burgled 50 houses. 3 years this time. Rinse and repeat after that. 5 years next time... well, you get the picture. Total cost: maybe a thousand homes burgled over his lifetime, and 20-30 years of feeding and housing him in jail.

(b) Lock him up somewhere with no dope, and force him to go clean. Get him through GCSEs, get him some training in something he could hold down a job at (like car repair, maybe). On release, he doesn't need money for dope and can get a job to earn money straight. Total cost: initial burglaries, 2 years in jail, teachers' wages.

Now which is going to give you the best return on your tax money, do you think?

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST,SJ about to leave the Mill and go for a lie
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 07:22 AM

Well clearly it would be (b) Graham, if it worked! But, after forty or so years of the 'softly-softly' approach of the PC 'give the scrotes a telly, pool table, gym, their own clothes, A-Level and Degree courses easy time' brigade, crime statistics show that offending is at its highest rate ever. Why don't you people see the correlation - it's as plain as the nose on your face?

I once read a comment from a prison officer whose job it was, back in the fifties, to administer the birch to young bastards - he said words to the effect of, "They never come back for a second dose". Wise words indeed.

S:0)

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST,Bruce Baillie
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 08:06 AM

If you look on the Daily Mail website there is a very interesting piece about a jail in Texas where the inmates are forced to wear pink clothing, undies, shirts, trousers the lot, even the walls are painted pink! apparently the local crime rate is down because no-one wants to go back for a second dose because these macho criminal types find it too demeaning!
...wouldn't have worked for Boy George though I guess!

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 08:46 AM

Prison time in the US is not as easy as you seem to think. I can't speak for other countries, and of course the news only prints the exceptions.

The local county lockup (sentences of less than a year) puts the cons to work, and it's heavy work. Stuff like cleaning up the roadsides -- ever think of that in July, in the high desert country like we have here? Cutting the grass and in general keeping the lawns of the county courthouse neat -- in August, here in the desert, by hand or with hand-propelled mowers. Shoveling the snow off the parking lots by hand. And they're available for governmental project -- we're looking into using them to move some library shelving in December.

The Women's Prison up the hill from town makes furniture, among other things. The women learn a trade and money made from the projects are credited to the account of those who did the work, but is only available to them a) to send to their children or family, if any or, b) credited to their account and available only upon release (less "canteen" purchases).

And "chain gangs" are now used in several localities, although they are not exactly what they used to be -- and I'm not talking only about the South.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 10:32 AM

Grab, surely the problem is when people try to combine the two approaches you outlined above. The prisions are overcrowded, and are full of drugs, but some attempts are made at teaching. Oh look, teaching doesn't work.....

Laws which are considered to be outdated, or otherwise irrelevant by a lage proportion of the population (I'm thinking mainly of some speed limits and certain drug laws here) should be re-examined. The law only works when what is llegal is genuinely considerd to be wrong. When this breaks down, so does any respect for the law.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 12:25 PM

Hang 'em all. If they weren't guilty we wouldn't have arrested 'em. Good people have nothing to fear. Bring back traditional British punishments, like peine forte et dure and drawing and quartering and that all time fave rave, boiling alive. Rehab don't work and just wastes money; you can reuse the rope.

Punish, yes, when punishment is what is called for. If the person can be salvaged, rehab. And some are so...warped, bent...that they have to be somehow forever banished from society.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 12:34 PM

I know of a Mudcatter who was "T-boned" by a truck whilst driving. They have long-lasting dibilitating injuries. The other driver, a young man, walked away with a fine and no injuries. No "involuntary attempted manslaughter" which it could well have been or any other charges except running a stop sign and failure to yield.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 12:35 PM

Bastard probably didn't have insurance, either.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 12:45 PM

"Softly softly" - anyone ever actually been in prison? Anyone actually been given a Community Service Order?

The problem isn't too soft or too hard - it's under resourced and unfocussed, and subject to changes made by people who haven't a clue and who have their eye on what the tabloids might say.   Things that don't work get persisted in, things that do work get abandoned.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 12:51 PM

Kat said, in part:

No "involuntary attempted manslaughter" which it could well have been

I never heard of such a charge, and I've spent the last 46 years working in contact with the criminal justice system in the US. Makes no sense. If it's "attempted", it's got to be voluntary. Yes, there can be involuntary manslaughter, or attempted manslaughter, you've got to choose between "involuntary" and "attempted". Or, of course, just straight manslaughter and murder.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Amos
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 12:59 PM

Salvaging and rehab would be a lot more feasible if there was a model of the individual's cognitive workings that made sense when compared to his experience. "Finding an inner child" does not do any good if it doesn't communicate to the individual's own experience, and similarly other schools of psycobabblalia which don't parallel the actual mind of the individual being addressed fail on the no-communication problem. This is not a simple issue but a thorny one -- a person who is emotionally shut down AND intellectually untrained, has no vocabulary or cultural trainng in looking within is not going to steer the way nice white analysts want him to go, no matter how sure they are that they know what is going on inside his head.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 05:07 PM

Oops, thanks, Uncle Dave...I knew something about it didn't look correct. I guess he didn't mean to so if the 'catter had died it would've been involuntary.

Rapaire, the company he worked for had insurance. Said ins. co. dragged things out for over four years so that the 'catter had to settle for a low-to-highest amount after binding arbitration, which just took place. It still has not been settled, another 1-3 months for the decision, and the arbitrator was forbidden by law to know the max. amt. they agreed to. So, the arbitrator could award what I would consider just compensation, say a million or two, and the 'catter would still only get the paltry sum they were forced into agreeing to, as they cannot go any longer with virtually no income and racking up medical bills, etc. When all of those are paid, IF they get the max. the injured party will wind up with maybe five grand, if they are lucky.

Of course, the way to change such situations is through the legislature. I hope folks remember this when there is talk of tort reform.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 19 Oct 06 - 05:19 PM

nice white analysts   What's the "white" got to do with in that context? (After all the "emotionally shutdown etc" person is goig to be white themselves most of the time.)

I quite agree though, there's clearly some very lazy thinking in this whole field, and that makes it easier for cynics to reject the whole idea of trying to find ways of salvaging people. There have been projects which have seemed to work, but typically they get ignored and closed down. They don't fit in with the prejudices of the throw-away-the-key merchants, or of the psychobabblers.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 20 Oct 06 - 12:44 PM

Personally, I'd like to see the pillory brought back.
Imagine how the sheen would be taken off of the glamorous profession of drug dealing if the dealer did 7 days in a public pillory instead of getting a suspended sentence or doing 30 days hidden away in a lockup. We could make it very humane. Five minute bathroom breaks every hour, a lunch break, a nice warm bed at night. In fact, it could be like a job...punch in at 9, punch out at 5. Just as long as the pillory is in a public place, where the convict can get plenty of attention from the kids in the neighborhood.
And yes, I'm completely serious. My guess is the recidivism rate would drop dramatically, and the cost of incarceration would be minimal.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 20 Oct 06 - 07:26 PM

Could well work completely the other way round, as was sometimes the case back in the old days. Imagine it, the dealer up there, with his sidekicks standing around providing backup, andn making sure noone threw anything. It could be more like a coronation than a punishment.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 Oct 06 - 11:48 AM

I'm afraid the profit motive would overwhelm any embarrassment factor.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Oct 06 - 11:55 AM

" anti social scum "

I hope you're not referring to Boy George there.... All he did was break a stupid substance law....

Busted for posession of a recreational substance... what a WOMBAT

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 21 Oct 06 - 11:57 AM

Wait... scratch that... he was sentanced to community service for not appearing in court over posession of a little coke....

Gimme a FN break....

Go catch some real criminals.... start on Wall Street, or Capitol Hill

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Big Mick
Date: 21 Oct 06 - 12:15 PM

Or Ottawa. Or London.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: katlaughing
Date: 21 Oct 06 - 08:53 PM

Speaking of appropriate sentencing...Chowchilla is about 90 miles east of San Jose, where a Las Vegas woman claimed in March 2005 that she bit into a fingertip in a bowl of chili at a Wendy's restaurant. Anna Ayala's stomach-turning claim made headlines around the world.

The claim was found to be a hoax and Ayala was sentenced to nine years in prison. Her husband was sentenced to more than 12 years for getting the finger from a co-worker who lost it in a workplace accident.

9 and 12 YEARS??!!! I suppose because Wendy's claimed losses in the millions from slow business once it hit the news, but still prison for years??!! Unbelievable.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 07:46 AM

I've got this theory that the police and courts are terminally incompetent and they're only interested in crime against 'property' anyway (that's not mine or your property, by the way, but major wealth belonging to bloated capitalists). Hence it's far easier (and more 'cost effective') to punish the victims and let those guilty of petty crime to go free. After all the victims are 'involved' in crime, aren't they? It's about time these idiots started to think about the socially destabilising effects of allowing anarchy to reign unchecked.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 09:02 AM

That's a bit harsh Shimrod. Besides, you forgot another of their major targets, the easy victim. Just imagine...

There's a spate of street robberies, by teenaged thugs in very similar branded sportswear, with hats or hood so nobody can see their faces.

There's a rash of speeding on the By-pass. Nobody is slowing down for the roadworks, as it's 11 am on a weekday, so there's no workmen on site, and the camera gets them.

Now, the police have two sets of criminals to chase. They get a 50% sucess rate if they send out tickets to all those drivers, who will generally curse, and pay up, and don't have bother leaving the station to go after the muggers attacking little old ladies...


The police are public servants. THEY WORK FOR US! WHY DON'T THEY ACT LIKE IT?

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 09:56 AM

As to the nine and twelve years for the finger-in-the-chili incident, I don't know about the inappropriateness of the sentences, but the one or two posts above seem to make light of the offense(s).

The gravity offense(s) did not lie in the obtaining or placing of the fingertip, but in the attempted fraud, attempted misuse of the courts. To focus on the physical actions is to ignore the real offense.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 10:13 AM

I understand that, thanks, Uncle Dave, in fact that is what really gets me about it. 9-12 years for attempted fraud of a corporation seems really extreme to me, esp. when one reads of government officials who don't get squat for fraud they have been found guilty of, or, of murderers, etc. who get off lightly through early parole, etc. It just seems very extreme to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 10:30 AM

Interesting Desert Island Discs today, with Camila Batmanghelidjh talking about criminalisation of abused children, whose lives are already worse than anything they'd experience in the British penal system.

Kitty

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 06:14 PM

Yes, 'Herga Kitty', I'm sure that some criminals and anti-social people were abused as children - and they certainly need help, not criminalisation.

But I don't believe that all criminals and anti-social people were abused in childhood. I think that there are also a lot of arrogant, selfish and even evil people out there and our society gives them licence to behave in any way they like and to get away with it most of the time. This is not a healthy way to run a society. People keep telling me that punishment and retribution don't work - but I think that that is mainly a half-baked, idealistic hypothesis based on wish fulfilment.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Gurney
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 10:54 PM

In my more cynical moments, I sometimes wonder if the police and courts like criminals better than they like law-abiding citizens,-always providing there ARE any.
Logically and cynically, if the criminals were wiped out, who would NEED law enforcers. They would go the way of candlestick shapers and collar-stud makers.

Long ago, in the days of chivilry(!) the authorities could declare a person an 'outlaw', which meant that they could be killed with impunity, and the killer might even receive a reward!
My reading suggests that this happened again fairly recently in America, due to the abundance of places to hide and scanty documentation. Nah, couldn't happen.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Grab
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 06:30 AM

I once read a comment from a prison officer whose job it was, back in the fifties, to administer the birch to young bastards - he said words to the effect of, "They never come back for a second dose".

And that man was a liar.

Or to be more charitable, maybe they really didn't come back to him. Because on the second offence they got banged up, got option (a) straight down the line, and became career criminals.

Bunn, you're dead right about rehabilitation not working in too many cases because the system is broken - for example, drug rehab clearly doesn't work if you've still got easy access to drugs, pushers trying to force the stuff on you, and no real reason for trying to do stuff differently. That's a basic problem with most British prisons, which were set up on the Victorian and pre-Victorian proved-to-be-a-failure principle of being places of punishment. More recent prisons (especially modern open prisons) are designed to get people straight if they show signs of being "straightenable".

Trouble is that the tabloids and tabloid-readers look on this a "soft option". They might want to think about how well they're succeeding at giving up smoking, and then think about how much of a "soft option" quitting crack cocaine would be...

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 07:55 AM

I think that there are also a lot of arrogant, selfish and even evil people out there and our society gives them licence to behave in any way they like and to get away with it most of the time.

True enough. And the richer and more powerful they are, and the more people they hurt in the course of their law-breaking, the better their chances of getting away with it; and if caught and convicted, the penalties they can expect to face in practice will be correspondingly lighter.

As for going after people who drive too fast, great. They are criminals who directly and indirectly threaten the lives of other road users. If the fines aren't enough to deter them, the fines aren't high enough. If it brings in revenue to be spend on other things, that's a bonus - but ideally there wouldn't be any money coming in from fines beacause people would slow down.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 12:19 PM

I was trying to use drivers caught by speed cameras as an example of easy to identify, and usually reasonably compliant offenders.


off topic...

Motoring offenses annoy me. There is no excuse, none whatsoever for some of the driving you see. People screaming past primary schools at going home time. These people should be punished very harshly. It's when the same penalties are applied for speeding past it at 3 am in the morning that the law becomes stupid.

Speed on its own is a major factor in about 15% of accidents, but it's easier to detect remotely, and to proof, than dangerous driving, or driving whilst drunk or high. They take someone on the ground to see it, and to flag the car down.

It's the extra effort going into reducing an easy to detect thing, and virtually ignoring the more dangerous, but harder to prosecute offenses that really, really annoys me!

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 12:43 PM

My feeling is that driving too fast is in fact, on the whole, the more dangerous type of offence. We are actually more likely to be injured in a road accident than in a mugging, and potentially cars are the most lethal instrument of death around.

And it seems to me that going after road-hogs is actually a win-win situation. If it cuts down offending, that is a benefit in itself for society. Even if its success in doing that is limited, that means it can actually bring in cash, which can in principle pay for extra personnel, and provide additional resources for dealing with other types of crime. And it shouldn't draw police away from that kind of work, because there isn't any need to use trained police to deal with drivers who have been spotted by a speed camera.)

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 01:07 PM

Yes, speeding is dangerous and should be punished - but on a couple of recent motorway trips, for every driver driving too fast, I've seen:

- At least 2 drivers using mobile phones - one of these, driving a 'people carrier', full of people, came very close to colliding with me because he abruptly attempted to change lanes with insufficient observation.

- 3 or 4 lorry and coach drivers who think that they can change lanes whenever they like - and to hell with any car drivers who happen to occupy the lane they have chosen to move into.

- 6 or 7 drivers not keeping up with the speed of the traffic and driving too slow. I call these people 'deadly creepers' because they cause other drivers to brake (often leading to the familiar 'ripple' effect whereby brake lights start coming on ahead for no apparent reason)and also block exits and entrances to the motorway.

I'm sure, given time, I could think of more - but just prosecuting speeders is very one-dimensional and doesn't cover many other forms of poor and dangerous driving.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 01:23 PM

Young mother murdered her four month old baby in England by setting it on fire and walked free today from court, another case of silly British justice, we need change.

Subject: RE: BS: Suitable sentencing
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 24 Oct 06 - 08:12 AM

I don't know what you're so worried about 'Guest' - after all plenty of mothers who didn't murder their babies have been locked up, haven't they? I suppose that this is to be expected in a society which is morally confused and in which officials and 'experts' are routinely incompetent and the judiciary are inconsistent.