What is it with the EU ‘mores’?
Not content with dishing out cash to southern states whose farming methods date back to Adam; with bailing out countries whose troubles are all of their own making, and moving their deliberations from Belgium to France for a few days every month by train (at a cost even the PoW would blush at), they now insist that convicted rapists and killers have the ‘human right’ to seek parole!
What happened to the old idea that such pests have forfeited their rights for as long as the Court decided?
If the UK’s monsters are detained ‘at Her Majesty’s Pleasure’, how can an overpaid lawyer from the Continent say they are not? Beats me.
Please indicate what you would do:
1. Hang ’em?
2. Detain them in open prisons in Dover with free one-way travel over the Channel?
2. Send them to live next door to the Eurojudges who want them freed – at the EU’s expense.
Boadicea's Chariot 
Yes well, I shook my head when I heard this report last evening.
We’ve had a couple of cases here recently were our cops do their job, get the criminals behind bars only for our judiciary / lefty lawyers to get them out on bail (all as a result of our ‘new constitution’.)
Well, we’ve had some criminals now stop asking for bail because the communities are sick and tired of habitual criminals being released back on to the streets that they’ve actually lynched a couple. Most recently a group of women / mothers got hold of an (accused) serial rapist, suffice to say he aint gonna rape no more.
From today’s DM
Need you ask? The electric chair, slowly.
Oh all right you can send the corpses to the Eurojudges for fertilizer! (Slowly)
I like the SA final solution.
Nice cartoon, Soutie.
CO, maybe there’s the germ of a democratic solution there, eh?
DICK.
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
JACK CADE.
Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o’er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say, ’tis the bee’s wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.
One really must prioritise one’s hit list!
Spousal unit’s goes thus-
1.Destroy all insurance companies.
2. Lynch all lawyers.
3. Empty the jails into the cemeteries.
Think of the money we would save!
I’ve often thought that cutting ‘IT’ off would be an admirable solution for rapists and the like. They sure wouldn’t be doing it again!
Good evening, LW.
Thank you for sharing. A trite and far too often trotted-out quote in my opinion but whatever! Some people feel that WS was actually suggesting that lawyers .were an essential part of a civilised society who did their best to ensure that anarchy did not rule. To be fair, most of those people are probably lawyers. Doesn’t make them wrong.
I came to the Law because I believed in many things. I like to think that most of them involved an innate belief in fairness, a wish to help and a desire to engage in dispassionate ,analysis of any set of circumstances and to work towards a just and equitable result for my fellow man. Most of the lawyers that I have known share those values, in my belief,
I am no particular fan of the muddy excesses of right-on thinking into which the ECHR chooses to wade but I’m not bothered about this one. Our Courts can still pass life sentences that really mean life. All that has been said is that we should review such sentences. I am certain that, after said reviews, we will still be leaving the scumbags concerned to rot in jail until they die.
Thanks, JM. I suppose it was too much to expect the hysterical media to offer us your explanation?
The result will be more legal costs for charades in which nobody believes paroles will be granted. Sounds like par for the EU course.
While I am as irritated as the next person about the interference of Europe in Britain’s laws, the general outrage attached to this debate has left me wondering, if anybody in Britain believes in redemption. Clearly the concept of mercy is an alien one? Perhaps our learned friend, and anybody else for that matter, would care to tell me precisely what the purpose of sentencing actually is, or is supposed to be. As far as I am concerned leaving people ‘to rot in jail until they die’, without hope of parole is every bit as savage as the crimes they are alleged to have committed. I say alleged, because the case against Jeremy Bamber appears to my unqualified eyes (though in that respect I am in the same category as the vast majority of people, who are calling for him to be left to rot in jail) to be extremely tenuous. http://www.jeremy-bamber.co.uk/
For the record, I will state my views on the purpose of sentencing which, I am sure we can all agree, should ultimately benefit society.
1) To prevent the criminal from committing further crimes.
2) To right any wrong where that is possible. – eg. the return of stolen goods.
3) Where possible to cause a rapprochement between criminal and victim, to enable the criminal to seek forgiveness and the victim to grant it.
4) To rehabilitate the criminal so that he can become a contributing member of society.
5) To punish the criminal, only insofar as it serves to discourage others from offending.
In my opinion, punishment should never, ever be about revenge. Revenge, especially that which is legally sanctioned, does not belong in a civilized society. Those who seek it are no better than the riotous mobs, that Soutie refers to, who necklace their victims with burning tyres, not all of whom are guilty let alone deserving of such treatment. The punishment should not so much fit the crime as fit the criminal. In many cases, I firmly believe, everybody would be better served by a short, sharp, shock than a long, drawn-out period of incarceration where bad habits can be learned and hope is lost.
What is clear to all, is that prison systems in Britain, America and elsewhere, no not work. They are expensive, in many cases extremely cruel and rather than rehabilitate offenders, they do precisely the opposite. Besides the damage they do to the prisoners, they do damage to those who guard them and, more importantly, they cause immense harm to the innocent families of the prisoners. What sort of character and attitude to society will be developed by a child whose father has been left to ‘rot in jail’? Not a healthy one.
I readily accept that some people are insane, or as people like to say, ‘criminally insane’, (so much more emotive, don’t you think and making it easier to hate), and as such, need to be closely monitored, which may well mean being locked up for life, though hopefully not to rot. Indeed, if they are insane, why make them suffer any further? What will that achieve? On the other hand if a person is deemed sane, then surely there must be some belief that they can be rehabilitated and that attempts must be made to do so?
British attitudes to crime and punishment appear to me to be deeply unedifying. Such attitudes lead to the sort of sectarianism we see in Northern Ireland, the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. I have one word for such attitudes. Nasty.
It is unfair to identify a single profession to distrust when there are so many that provide a living for their practitioners from the suffering of others.
Ahhrgh, sorry about the bold and italics. Bold should stop after ‘ever’ and italics stop after ‘hate)’.
And of course in all professions there are good as well as less good people.
Yes, they should have as much mercy shown to them as they showed to their victims. That is, none!
Of course prison doesn’t work, it is a bloody holiday camp, were it hard labour for 16 hours a day with no telly, fags and DVDs, I doubt very much many would return.
The recidivism rate in Mariposa County is notoriously low, well it would be living in un-airconditioned work camp tents in the Arizona desert dressed in humiliating pink underpants and not much else!
Revenge should be the special privilege of victims and their families. Preferably conducted in an Old Testament manner.
As far as the children of such malefactors are concerned, most do not know each other, are not supported by them and have never lived in the same house! Most are the product of nasty short brutish liaisons to obtain a home and benefits for the scum mother. There are no normal human relationships to damage.
Your first purpose of sentencing, Sipu, would seem to argue in favour of either the death sentence or an American style tariff of 199 years. The righting of wrongs strikes me as wishful thinking especially in cases of rape and assault, where the experience will never be forgotten by the victims. Even the return of stolen goods is not going to wipe out the horror of having had intruders in one’s home. The only rapprochement I would wish with any criminal who had done wrong to me or any of my family would be that he be sufficiently “proche” for me to kick him, but then I am in favour of “short, sharp shocks”. Does that mean flogging?
I don’t follow your argument that “unedifying attitudes” have promoted sectarianism. The split in Islam started on the death of Mohamed and has carried on ever since, over the dispute as to who should succeed him – the secretary or the son-in-law. Pathetic, but nothing to do with crime and punishment.
Surely the purpose of throwing away the key is to protect society from the rapists and murderers. No further ethical debate is required to clarify the matter.
I have just been watching a documentary about a police team which specialises in Distraction Burglaries. They were after this particularly vicious bunch of Irish thugs whose victims, aged between 77 and 93, had not only been robbed but abused physically and verbally. When I had listened to the victims speaking and then learned that the police had got one of the scumbags, I felt he might as well be dropped out of a plane somewhere over his homeland. A middle-aged man who specialised in terrorising old people would hardly seem ideal material for rehabilitation. Perhaps of course someone had “taken away his all-day sucker at the age of six” as PG Wodehouse would say and we should all feel sorry for him, but I didn’t. As the police pointed out, there was no need for violence in these robberies. That was just gratuitous evil and punishing one low-life sufficiently severely to discourage others would call for the pink underpants and chain gang.
CO, your ‘eye for an eye’ philosophy does not and can not work. It keeps people living in savagery as we can see from what takes place in the Middle East and Africa. It is a primitive ethos.Civilization came to Europe because of the concept of forgiveness and redemption. Regardless of what you believe, the Christian ethic was hugely responsible for Europe’s progress. I readily accept that as practised by those in authority, there were many, many faults, but that was more about using religion to gain power rather than in the way lesser mortals were expected to practise it. The masses, were implored by the church, to forgive their neighbours, to turn the other cheek to those who persecuted them and to show mercy to those who had done them wrong. Forgiving trespassers and the casting of stones etc. You do not need to be the victim of a violent crime to learn what it means to forgive. Just look at all the unhappy divorcees and their families who endlessly fight and suffer because they cannot forgive each other. The act of forgiveness removes a tremendous burden from both parties. While failure to do so breeds mutual and growing resentment.
I have no problem whatsoever with Mariposa County. By all means flog criminals and humiliate them and do what is necessary to make them wish they had never committed the crime. But, they have to be given hope. The sentence has to be finite and they have to believe that once they have finished the sentence they have a chance of genuine rehabilitation. Why on earth should they fulfill their side of the bargain if society does not do the same? If there is no chance of their being released then it is savagery to treat them that way and achieves nothing but my contempt (and I am sure that of many others) for those who enforce it. Somebody who is incarcerated is, by definition, harmless to society. It is uncivilized to torture a harmless creature.
Your final paragraph is illogical and, with the greatest possible respect, does not warrant comment.
Sheona, there is more than one way to skin a cat. If the only two ways to stop people re-offending were to execute them or lock them up for 199 years, then perhaps you would be right. But I strongly disagree that is the case. People can be made to change and can go onto live socially productive lives. But it requires the impetus of society to make that happen. If I may offer a personal anecdote. When I was a young man, working at my first proper job, I used to commute between the City and west London. At the time tube fares were high and consumed a large part of my pitiful salary. On the very odd occasion, when I took a journey that exceeded the limits of my weekly ticket, I confess that I avoided buying a ticket that was valid for the full length of my journey. Probably 5 times at most. I was eventually caught. The ticket collector gave me no more than a dressing down and made to pay the full fare. But I was so humiliated by the experience that I never did it again. To this day I am hugely ashamed that I was, in effect a thief. Were I caught today, I would probably get a criminal record, or certainly a punishment that would cause me more damage than the crime warranted. And, I would be a worse citizen as a result.
Crime and prisons are big business. Lawyers, civil servants, contractors, human rights organisations, politicians, journalists etc all make money from a chaotic, dysfunctional, ineffective and wildly expensive form of crime control. I do not know it for a fact, but I strongly suspect that a bit of research would show that criminal lawyer organizations in the US lobby in support of the NRA because a thriving NRA means that more guns will be sold, more crimes will be committed and more criminals will need to be defended.
The criminal service does not want the prison system to function properly, because it would put them out of work. It is just as divorce lawyers do not want an amicable settlement between husband and wife because it will reduce their fees. In the same way newspapers like nothing more than a horrific crime to report. What is clear about this modern secular society in which we live, is that it is far more venal than the Church ever was, Catholic or Anglican.
If you remove all hope from a person’s life you remove all cause for morality which leads to desperate measures. I see that loss of hope in the townships of South Africa. It is only religion, that keeps the levels of crime lower than they would otherwise be. Those people Christians or Muslims or whatever, do not expect happiness in this world but through moral behaviour they hope to find it in the next. They may be mistaken, but at least they have hope and while they have that, they they are not out there killing, raping and stealing.
Oh no! Not more forgiveness. It might make you and your confessor feel better but what else? The murderer doesn’t give a toss either way. The victim’s family? Forget it.
I see very little evidence of Christianity’s principles of forgiveness and redemption.
The Albigensian crusades along with the Crusades I-IV.
Burnings at the stake by all and sundry of each others versions of Christianity.
The Spanish Inquisition
The systematic theft of Hawaii by Christian missionaries.
Salem witch trials.
Etc,etc.
All excellent examples of the ‘civilizing’ of people by Christianity!
Most religions including Christianity have been the bane of civilizations from time immoral.
Just an attempt to maintain hierarchical positions in a cowed population.
I suspect that public execution of malefactors had a far more salutary effect.
I’m quite sure stocks and public whipping of yobs would have a far more restraining effect on their peer groups today than Christian admonishments of ‘forgivness’!
Yes, it’s a weird concept.