EARLIER THIS YEAR the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, said that if victims of burglary found themselves in serious danger from a thief, they would not have to face prosecution if, in the process of defending themselves, it resulted in the intruder’s death.
Well an elderly, retired shopkeeper, Cecil Coley, 72, is about to put the justice secretary’s reassurance to the test . Mr Coley, in defending himself and his friend from a gang of gun-wielding robbers who had entered his shop and demanded cash, challenged one of the gang who stumbled from the shop fatally wounded.
The gang member had suffered a critical knife wound to his chest. Mr Coley and his friend, who had earlier been pistol whipped by members of the gang, have been arrested on suspicion of murder.
This is not of course the first act of heroism of its type. In June Peter Flanagan, 59, was also arrested on suspicion of murder, after also fatally stabbing a burglar, not far from Mr Coley’s store in Old Trafford Manchester.
The law has always set a limit upon what a homeowner or businessman can do when both they and their property are put under such a threat. In the past the advice, in the first instance, was to provide the thief with whatever he or she asks for; after all, property can be replaced: then, in the second instance, it was made clear to any potential victim that the criminal also had rights under the law, and the use of too much force used in the process of restraining the culprit, could lead to the prosecution of the victim; which has led to the total submission and frustration towards our legal system.
Time after time the victims have had to take it on the chin and let the law take its course. But when the law had finished its itinerary and the criminal was found guilty; sentencing was a meagre gruel for victims to digest – fines, ASBOS, and, in extremis, prison.
But fines never got paid, and ASBOS became a badge of honour; while prison became the greatest joke of all. When sentencing a guilty party to a period behind bars; the judge’s term of sentence was and is just a headline figure used to assuage the public mood.
Whatever sentence a judge passes, it can and will be cut, depending upon the seriousness of the crime; from between a third and a half. The headline figure is meaningless. Whenever a sentence is given and reported in the media, the first thing the law abiding, but cynical public do, is make a simple mathematical calculation involving subtraction: four years (two); ten years (five); a life sentence, 20 years (10 or 15).
A justice system depends on just that – justice. Not on reducing the prison population in order to economise; not on re-characterising rape into major and minor; either in order to keep some such people out of prison altogether, or reduce the sentences of others; leaving only the worst offenders to serve a full term in prison; thus once more contributing to a lowering of the prison population.
KEN CLARKE HAD to retreat over his comments on the subject of rape. Mr Clarke is not a callous man and we live in straightened times where economies have to be made to keep the country solvent: and if the justice secretary had been open with the electorate and said he had to find 20% cuts within his budget, and this meant unpopular decisions. Then the public, rightly, would have torn him to pieces!
There are two major concerns that, in poll after poll, the public feels the politicians are not only not doing enough about, but working against them and treating them like empty headed philistines who need to be led, if only by their ear.
Crime and immigration are at the heart of people’s concerns. Those people who live beyond the boundaries of London, and may as well be savages as far as the chattering classes of the capital metropolis is concerned, are daily becoming frustrated, angered and ready to align themselves with whatever political party of the far right who hears their concerns.
Since the 1960s (yes, that again) the accomplishments of liberalism have infestated every aspect of British culture; and no more so than when it comes to crime and the criminal justice system. From the sixties onward, excuse after liberal excuse was dreamt up by academics to, if not justify criminal behaviour, then at least to understand it; and with such an understanding enlightenment was meant to follow – yea, right.
We, the law abiding, live in areas of the country that our liberal ring masters in both houses of parliament, would not wish their household pet to experience. But where I live it is almost a paradise compared to the lives of those people who live on many of our inner city, or city council estates.
To these people, the justice system in its present form, represents yet another impediment to their lives. To these people, if they ring the police, to report a burglary, they are usually ignored. For burglary, like some forms of shop lifting and credit card fraud, it is left to the stores and banks to deal with.
OUR JUSTICE SYSTEM is bankrupt. Our politicians now have little to say on the subject, except to rehearse once again the old liberal catholicon that has led us to the situation we find ourselves in today.
Social workers and probationists have been the forlorn hope of liberalism’s attempt to change human nature. Instead of meeting it half way, the liberal idealists have succumb to the criminal’s wants and needs; and in so doing seeks to justify the cruelties they unleash upon society.
Crime should be rewarded by punishment - the severity of which depends upon the nature of the crime. But crime should be punished; if for no other reason than for the sake of the victim. For it is the victim whose rights and concerns that should never be put on an equal basis with the criminal perpetrator.
The trouble with today’s society is that the distribution of human rights has extended well beyond what the people would have thought possible. For they thought that human rights should only go to the law abiding and not the criminal.
Like all of us, the criminal should know right from wrong; and from what is legal and illegal; and this in itself should have redirected their fortunes. But it did not and they acted in the full knowledge that their behaviour was illegal. Yet given this, such people attract to them people who wish to rationalise their behaviour. Such is the liberal foot print that is left behind every sentence within the criminal justice system.
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