Wednesday 8 June 2011

The Criminal Justice System

A  democratic country thrives on a fair criminal justice system and I often think that the United Kingdom is in meltdown partly due to demolition of our criminal justice system. Every layer of our justice system has been wrecked so that today we can no longer trust many of the judges, the police or the prison service. It is our own fault because we have accepted 'the mission creep' so called reforms without batting an eyelid.

Most thinking people have now accepted that our judges and politicians inhabit a different planet from the Paying Class. Their often heard pronouncements bare no relevance to life on planet earth. The sentences meted out to career criminals are so weak that they are pointless. They are allowing the Criminal Class to laugh at our criminal justice system.

Most of us have also realised that the police have largely abandoned the streets to the criminal and the unsocial. Local parks are in the hands of foul-mouthed gangs of kids. The roads have been abandoned so that many of the incomers are driving round uninsured. The town centres have been abandoned so that in the evenings many of them are no-go areas because of the drunken behaviour of the young.

The prisons are a very unfunny joke. Most of them resemble holiday camps. One hears tales that these prisons are havens for the drug addicted! How the hell are they getting drugs in? Don't people get searched anymore? Aren't people watched by prison staff? The impression is left that the prisoners are running the prison service.

Nothing ever changes, it does not appear to matter which political party is in power the criminal justice system simply gets watered down even further. It must stop because if it doesn't then we may as well not bother with punishing the offenders. Just let anarchy rule the streets because we are only one step away from it now and it has been created deliberately.

Just for the record when my grandkids read this blog in years to come, I want sentences to fit the crime. I want proper, severe, prisons which scare the wits out of the criminal (preferably a mozzie ridden island in the Western Isles). I want the police back onto the streets hounding the young gangs  and the town centre drunks. I want to bring back fear to the criminal where the police don't call them 'mate' and yes...I would welcome the return of the death penalty.

I also welcome the government's U-Turn on the disgraceful proposals submitted by Ken Clarke to further weaken the sentencing policy. I just wish that they would stop U-turning and start governing. A real Tory would have reversed much of the NoLab nonsense months ago but this is not a real Conservative government and the LibDems are slowing up the reforming process.

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