cjd - Profile

Well we know some things about this now. We know that the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, the bit responsible for self-control; call it adult behaviour, is still developing until the age of 24ish. we also know that people - mostly boys - that get involved with the law whilst young, peak their criminal behaviour at around the same time and all but about 10% eventually give it up. In fact age is the best crime prevention method.

Also, when boys get long term relationships and jobs their offending declines rapidly.

So, in summary, anything we can do to get young offenders older-headed quicker - like getting a job - we should do, and writing off convictions from a child's record seems very sensible - for once.

Try it in a taxi......

You missed the first bit of the quote

"I realize this may sound harsh,"

It makes me feel physically sick. 

Originally Posted by Garde

“Now thats what i call swift Justice ”

Pity about it taking an average of 178 months from conviction to execution though....

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/time-death-row

A life sentence is called an indeterminate sentence, which means that the judge with give a minimum term to be served then it's up to the prison service to determine when they think the prisoner is safe to let out. In the meantime he'll move from high security prisons to low security and go through various programmes in the meantime.

The thirteen life sentences will probably all be concurrent, for obvious reasons - the idea is to set the tariff at the level proportionate to the seriousness of the offenses with the guidelines that they have for the crimes.

But the whole thing needs to be changed so that it's plain what actual term a prisoner will serve - drop the term life and stop pretending that an 8 year determinate sentence means 8 years, when it doesn't it means 4.

Well I'm with you on life meaning life. In fact I'd abolish the phrase and just say what the exact sentence is. Your man with 13 life sentences was actually sentenced to a minimum of 8 but had served 12 when he did a bunk. (He's obviously an idiot - he was going to be released on licence, now he's goig back for another long stretch.)

All prison sentences are given with the up front knowledge that only half will be served -unless there's bad behaviour to be considered, so an 8 year term is actually 4, plus 4 on licence. About half of all prisioners released on licence re-offend so it works for about half - which means you've saved 50% of your taxes.

As for capital punishment, I'm against it for moral and personal reasons, but luckily for me we also know that it doesn't deter others from murder and costs more that locking people away so I can also rationalise it. 

Yes, I understand what you're saying, but my point was that you can't undermine the general point that crime has been falling for many years, just by pointing out that one or more individual crimes within the overall statistic is/are rising

In business terms, if you report a year on year increase in profit of 5% in your hardware business but lose 20% of fork handles, it doesn't mean that you're making a loss.

It's just an interesting point that there has been this year on year fall in crime across all developed countries but the general perception by the public is that crime is on the rise and generally, when people hear that, their first reaction is to say that the stats are wrong.

But by picking one statistic out of a whole set, you are manipulating the argument yourself aren't you? The statistics are saying that even when the rise in sexual offences are factored in (which appears to be caused by the historic revellations from Saville et al), there is an overall fall of 15% in crime. The fall isn't just this year, it's been falling year on year in all developed nations for many years.

It's interesting that a lot of people don't feel this to be the case, I think that's because the media reports day in and day out about individual horrendous crimes - which still exist of course - and the headline of 'no one burgled/raped/murdered yesterday in Swindon' never gets written.

It's common to think that crime is increaing but it isn't. It's been falling in all developed countries for the last 25 years. No-one really knows why but it's now an accepted fact.

I don't usually read Daily Mail articles, but for once they actually have a good story about it:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2313942/UK-Peace-Index-Rate-murders-violent-crime-falling-faster-Western-Europe.html#ixzz30axjijoC

Are you sure? Revenge is the usual motive for the death penalty when all other rationalisations are swept away, like cost and deterrence. I can understand the need for it, I just don't think it helps us as a society. All the evidence we have, tells us that the death penalty doesn't deter, it's as simple as that. What we're left with, as I say, is revenge.

The American system costs more to execute someone than keep them in prison for 30 years. This is because they need specialist, high security prisons just for them and the appeals process takes 20 years or more and is also very expensive.