Lenient sentencing ?

mr_eddy

I was watching one of those police chase program things last night - The UK version and at the end of the show it dictates the sentencing that each of the people caught during the program got. Now at this point I am totally aware that they cherry pick cases to make the best show but even still I was amazed at how crap the sentencing was.

I am not of a Daily Mail persuasion and I consider myself to be reasonably enlightened individual and I also understand that locking people up for 20 years only delays the problem but surely there has to be some degree of punishment not least of all to satisfy the victims.

Case in point , One woman was caught driving a uninsured / un-taxed / non-MOT car with no license. She had a boot full of stolen gear that she stole - They had CCTV of her stealing the stuff and getting into this car. She had a list of prior convictions and had been known to use multiple aliases. She was blatantly wasting police time and lying at every opportunity - Basically they had her bang to rights. She got a 6 month ban and served 4 weeks in prison and was ordered to pay costs (I think about £150) - WTF !!!

Another case - A dude who had a list of 19 convictions (Yes 19) for TWOC cars and aggravated assault and burglary, They caught him after he stole a 4x4 and crashed into a fence, He was doing 90 mph on the wrong side of the road. Obviously he had no insurance but also no license and was already in receipt of a driving ban. Whilst being booked he punched a police office in the face (all on CCTV). He bot bailed and turns out he got 200 hours community service and a further 6 month ban for driving - AGAIN WTF!!!!!!

I am not suggesting we act like the USA and lock everyone up as that just leads to extensive bouts of recidivism but surely common sense has to play a part here - You have to ask yourself why is it that someone who has 19 previous convictions for serious crimes like burglary and assualt still on the street ?

I am not sure of the exact solution but I believe that harsher sentences combined with prisons with a greater focus of social interaction and education would go a long way.

DeVlaeminck

Difficult because you say we don't want to be like the USA and lock everyone up but then you say we should lock more people up for longer - I believe we already lock more people up than we used to as it is.

Perhaps we should stop locking people up as punishment and only use it as deterrent or protection of public - but that would lead to some very unpopular decisions.

Rehabilitation is something that everyone is likely to agree is a good thing but perhaps not so easy to achieve, especially without huge resources going into it.

The best solution must be to stop people ending up becoming habitual law breakers in the first place - but that is going to require some fundamental changes in society and I suspect there would be huge differences in how it is best achieved.

mr_eddy

I agree which is why I think locking people up and just leaving them there is not the answer, I think we need to get people off the streets but educate them whilst they are off the streets rather than just put them in a box. A hybrid, Ideally criminals will willingly give up their habits but that is likely to take a long time and until then we need to educate them and keep them in a controlled environment. Maybe supervised work (I don't mean community service) along with adult educational courses will help ?

surrey_commuter

Or let the victim chose, so a woolly liberal can send them on a safari and the editor of the DM can have them tortured to death. After a few years it would be interesting to see if there was a trend for different groups to experience different crime levels

mr_eddy

Obviously something needs to be done, If these scum bags keep getting away with stealing cars, and given the 19 previous convictions with no jail time some of them obviously are, then there is no incentive for them to stop. I am not suggesting that stealing a car deserves 15 years in prison but maybe a minimum of 1 year in a supervised institution where they are introduced to victims and educated a little so they can hopefully learn to make the correct life choices.

As DeVlaeminck said the end goal is to stop people becoming habitual law breakers and I think ultimately a combination of a proportional sentence in a institution along with access to the required tools and learning options to better themselves maybe the answer.

Someone who steals 5 cars in a row and gets a slap on the wrist and £100 fine is clearly not going to be scared into going straight.

slowmart

Imagine the perspective of a copper. You catch the criminals, have the case proved by the CPS at court and found guilty by a jury of their peers only for a wholly inadequate sentence to be handed down by the judge.

While sentencing guidelines are heavily prescriptive the whole system is in dire need of total rebuild. If you take Holland, the falling prison population has led to prisons closing due to the lack of criminals.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -drop.html

But Hey we have Liz Truss in charge, a woman so dense she can bend light but I wouldn't turn her down if she offered

rjsterry

Slowmart wrote:

...

But Hey we have Liz Truss in charge, a woman so dense she can bend light but I wouldn't turn her down if she offered

:shock: Takes all sorts I suppose.

mr_eddy

Yep agreed the whole system needs a reboot !

mr_goo

I think we've had similar threads in the past. I guess lenient sentencing will also see a rise in vigilantism.

I'm sure it was on this site that one forum member recounted the story of a serial scrote from a housing estate who was the ultimate anti social protagonist and twocker. The law failed to deal with him, so some of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood put him in the back of a van and took him away to be dealt with.
Aparently he never caused anymore trouble after that.

slowbike

similar tails of the law not being able to deal with it around where I live - kids terrorising old(er) folk in a garage compound - scared silly by some other residents wielding sledgehammers - kids stopped ..

That's kids though - faily swiftly dealt with - if shown the boundaries and those boundaries effectively enforced.

Long driving bans may seem a good idea - but it's not going to encourage them to behave as they can't see that far into the future

Another thought - rather than inprison them - if they are without jobs - how about send them to another area and supervised - a bit like open prison - and helped to integrate with the law abiding part of society - a lot of them fall into their old ways because of the company they hang out with or the lack of money to fund their habits ...