Thanks to a series of parliamentary questions from Tory MP Priti Patel, we now know that Britain’s most prolific criminal has 567 convictions to his name. Eight other criminals have notched up more than 300 convictions, while dozens of others have scored a century. Three criminal have been convicted of rape three times, and 29 have been convicted of three or more firearms offenses.Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
Well, let me spell it out. If all of these useless, horrible, swine haven’t yet been locked up for the rest of their miserable, pointless lives, they bloody well should have been. They are evidently beyond redemption. They will have cost us a fortune in terms of policing and court time. They will have caused untold fear and misery. They make all of us worry about our property, our personal safety and that of our friends. We now all have to consider risk whenever we go on holiday - or just leave the house for a few hours: the quality of our lives is being constantly degraded by these valueless Untermensch.
I don’t care if they have mental problems, or if they were abused as children, or if they claim to have turned over new leaves. I don’t care if most of their crimes were relatively minor – i.e. creating a disturbance or weeing in the street or minor acts of vandalism.
I don’t care if there’s severe over-crowding in prisons, or if the European Court wouldn’t like us to be horrible to “vulnerable” wrong-doers, or if the New Statesman prints an angry leader urging compassion, or if Church leaders plead for clemency on their behalf or urban liberals hold candlelit vigils outside Wormwood Scrubs or Polly Toynbee tells us it’s the fault of Tory spending cuts or community leaders assure us that owning guns and committing rape are an inherent part of their culture, or if a counsellor maintains that alcoholism and drug addiction are diseases and that sufferers need understanding and medical treatment rather than punishment.
I just don’t care. Because you and I – the people who don’t commit crimes and pay the taxes that fund the police and the criminal justice system – are the ones whose right to be protected from those who can’t or won’t control themselves is being violated on a massive scale in what is now one of the most criminal nations in Europe.
The government has two basic duties: to defend us from foreign invasion, and to protect us from our fellow citizens. Everything else is mere icing.
Do get a grip, you monumentally useless sods!
Does the Justice System still have this ridiculous convention whereby the court [ or more importantly the jury] is not told about the number of previous convictions until sentence has been passed. I have never understood that. In the early 70s I came across a burglar in my flat in London. At his trial I felt sorry for him because he looked such a miserable loser and the police were not very "polite" to him. When he was sentenced [21 months] it was disclosed that he had 32 previous convictions so I did not feel sorry for him anymore.
ReplyDeleteI also do not quite understand the American system where, if you have three strikes against you, you automatically go down for a very long time. Does that still operate and was there not a strong suggestion that it should be introduced here [probably got blocked by European Convention on Human Rights?]It would certainly avoid the kind of repeat offences numbers you quote in your post.
And finally, every criminal case in the United States seems to involve plea bargaining. What are the advantages? Does it accelerate the process, gain more convictions or help put "bigger fish" behind bars?