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Tuesday 26 March 2019

SHORT CUSTODIAL SENTENCES MUST NOT BE ABOLISHED

Everyone has heard of cause and effect but many pay lip service to an understanding of that simple phrase.  Those who are increasingly vocal in their hints and arguments  that short custodial sentences, i.e. of less than six months, should be abolished are talking so much nonsense when they attempt to explain what would be the effect. Facts are that in the magistrates courts only 4% of cases end with an immediate custodial sentence.  These are usually reserved for violent offences particularly in domestic cases and for those for whom previous non custodial sentences have failed to reduce offending. An awful example of where we are now occurred yesterday at Burnley Magistrates Court. Similar cases happen every day at every magistrates court in the country. We are asked to believe that a probation service decimated by acute mismanagement by failing Grayling can institute and supervise appropriate rehabilitative programmes for these recidivist offenders around 70% of whom offend under the influence of drink and/or drugs. No modern society can repeat the error of 1920s America and institute prohibition of the former but we can decriminalise drug use and at a stroke tax its sales from licensed vendors and allow addicts to know they are  imbibing substances that in "normal" use will not kill them with their impurities. With the farcical political proceedings currently exhibiting the worst of politicians perhaps in the not so distant future we can have a government that is for the people and not its own survival as a living entity.  
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous2 April 2019 at 10:32

    I don't agree about de-criminalising drugs, but you are so right about the probation service and its allied organisations. A violent criminal comes to court, and my choices are a fine for which they have no income to pay, or a community order where unpaid work is unsuitable due to the exaggerated mental or physical health, leaving a sentence of RAR days (rehabilitation activity requirement days) or prison.
    If they have been very naughty, they get upto 20 RAR days. So what happens on a RAR day? Anecdotally I'm told it could be filling out a questionnaire which should show them how naughty they have been, or listening to someone drone on for a couple of hours. After a couple of hours they can leave for the day and that is marked as a completed RAR day.

    If they don't turn up, they are asked why, and occasionally we hear that they have had half a dozen absences before they are brought back before the court. Our response to that, well there is not much we can do.... perhaps add another couple of RAR days?

    Prison works, it gets them off the streets, it messes up their social lives, they get an example of what is coming if they don't listen...

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