Earlier this month, a chap in Maidenhead saw his stolen bike in a street in Maidenhead. It was locked. A police community support officer (i.e. not a real policeman) told the man he could not break the lock to retrieve his bike in case the thief sued him for destroying his property.He said they's monitor the area and nab the culprit when he returned. Naturally, the thief was allowed to get clean away with the bike. (You can read the whole appallingn story here.)
There are burglars prowling around our neck of the woods. A few days ago we found the flimsy trellis on top of our garden fence (which backs onto an alley) hanging limply from its moorings, and an upended rubber rubbish bin beneath it. Evidently the thief had climbed onto the bin and tried to haul himself over the fence into our garden before coming a cropper.
This morning the lady from the house two doors away popped round to say that they’d come back last night to find their garden furniture had been moved up against the brick wall which separates them from their immediate neighbour.
I did mention to my wife the possibility of contacting the police, but she rolled her eyes at the very thought. And of course she’s right. No doubt they’d send over a Crime Prevention Officer (I used to think that that’s what all policemen were supposed to be) who’d tell us we need to spend several thousand pounds making our house impregnable without in any way making it possible for a burglar to injure themselves while attempting to gain ingress. And then they’d bugger off back to the office to get on with more important matters (paperwork, planning their holidays, dreaming up new ways to harass the law-abiding middle classes, applying for week-long community outreach workshops, renewing their subscription to the Gay, Lesbian and Trans-Gender Police Association etc.).
In the highly unlikely event that the man in the stripy vest with a bag marked “Swag” slung over his shoulder who’s been casing our joint is ever arrested (he’d probably have to hand himself in for that to happen), it will no doubt be discovered that he already has a string of offences to his name for which he has been tried, found guilty, and not sent to prison.
It emerged this week that a quarter of all those who took part in the recent riots had committed at least ten previous crimes - that the system knows about. But only a third of these odious degenerates had actually ever been to prison.
No doubt the little turd intent on stealing our possessions and those of our neighbours has a rap sheet as long as an orang-utan’s arm. (Given his incompetence, he must have been caught at least once – even by our spectacularly useless police.) And it’s highly likely that the wicked bastard has never seen the inside of a prison cell.
It’s so bloody obvious that It hardly seems worth making the point that the failure to imprison criminals who have demonstrated an unwillingness to change their ways is the key reason why, in the course of the last 50 years, Britain has turned from one of the least criminal societies on earth into one of the most criminal. You’d have to be a liberal to learn exactly the wrong lessons from this grotesque state of affairs – which is that after someone has committed the same or similar crimes a number of times, there is absolutely no point in trying to reform them, and letting them out onto the streets is simply a dereliction of duty towards the public which pays for the criminal justice system. (The three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule has always struck me as eminently sensible.)
Ken Clarke assumes that the propensity for criminals to reoffend once they’ve been released is a sign that the penal system has failed. In a way, of course, it is: prison simply isn’t scary enough to make them desist. On another level, it has nothing to with the prison system. Persistent criminals have chosen to earn a living by making the lives of innocent people miserable. They have absolutely no intention of turning into decent human beings. They need to be removed from society on a permanent basis. Simples!
Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, commented: “A record prison population is a sign of failure, not success.” No, Frances – we live in a criminal society because not enough criminals are in prison. A state of affairs where some vile shit who has caused shock, pain, fear and loss to blameless, law-abiding people on at least ten previous occasions without the inconvenience of imprisonment represents true failure – a failure by liberal wankers like you to care more about the suffering of victims than feeling good about yourself.
I couldn’t care less how many criminals are in prison, or how much it costs, as long as I, my family and my neighbours are safe. Any other approach is just sentimental self-indulgence.
If you’re still not convinced, just remember that Ken Clarke has form: this fool has spent years trying to get us to adopt the Euro.
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