[wraymond]

I was halfway through writing a post on this before realising it was familiar ground so, rather than new stuff, here’s mine again.

From April 2018.

‘There are several issues arising from this tragedy. The reduction of sentences in recognition of a guilty plea is frequently presented as a way of allowing the genuinely remorseful to accept their responsibility as a demonstration of their rehabilitation. Is there anybody at all who seriously thinks the idiot in this case falls into that category?

The best way to recognise this, apparently, is to reduce the penalty. That presupposes the full sentence is a deterrent. I wonder just who thinks that and what the likelihood is of them in their walk of life being a victim. It’s all rubbish of course, the primary objective being to mitigate the costs of prosecution by the state and the legal aid for the defendant.

Another benefit, of course, is the reduction of pressure on prison places and the necessarily huge expenditure involved in prison building. The idea that the inbuilt policy in the first place does not deter the criminal seems to be lost in translation.

In this particular case I was sure I had read somewhere that the maximum sentence for the death of a victim in such circumstances following a verdict of guilty was 9 years per victim. It seems the mathematical expertise of a certain Ms. D. Abbot is shallower than at first thought.’

Nothing much changes except the names of those responsible for judgement. Of course, once again the lives of the deceased and their innocent families are wrecked beyond repair. Maybe now the voices of hand-wringing apologists who move securely and in very different circles will be moderated. With a massive and unassailable majority all it needs is the stroke of a pen.