Crime pays, and the hours aren't bad either. (The Criminal Justice System)

Member Name: salgirl

Product:	The Criminal Justice System
Date:	11/09/01 (69 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Might deter crime

Disadvantages: Probably doesn't

Justice. The lady holding the balanced scales is blindfolded, and how ironic is that nowadays?

Crime is booming business, to some extent it always has been. From your bloke on a street corner selling hooky gear from a suitcase, to a fraudulent City Banker; from a petty thief to an armed robber; from a stalker to a sex attacker; from a young buck who’s looking for a ruck to a full blown murderer. Crime runs from both ends of the extreme. Then you have the world of drugs, extortion, kidnapping, racketeering, terrorism and, rightly or wrongly, prostitution. The list is goes on.

Every nook and cranny of the turning world will have some grain of crime growing within it.

Given all this, you’d think that mankind would have got its act together by now in sorting out suitable punishments. As it is, each society has its own ideas as to how to handle the problem.

Some countries favour the death penalty to act as deterrent to the committing of a crime. Seeing as how these countries are killing people on a reasonably regular basis, it therefore points to this being an ineffectual method. It may be justice in the eyes of the victims, but should an innocent person be murdered for someone else’s crimes, just how fair can the system be?

Then you have places that operate the Hammurabi Laws, (Hammurabi or Hammurapi – 18th century B.C. King of Babylonia; proclaimer of one of the earliest codes of law), which operates the eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth form of justice. Indeed, the bible offers up such pearls along the line of “if thine own eye offend thee, pluck it out”, which indicates that metering out like-for-like justice is a popular yardstick. It’s actually not a bad idea, but once again, it falls apart the minute an innocent person is involved. And they (we) invariably will be.

Now we move to the more human angle, with the countries that believe in an entirely penal system. It’
;s expensive to run, largely ineffectual, a breeding ground for more crime and stretched beyond its creaking limits. The only up side is that you can walk away from this with your life, although that isn’t fully guaranteed. This system SHOULD be the one to work best, and yet it clearly doesn’t. Why is that? Because, as fair as the English justice is deemed to be, no one works to a consistent level.

Unrealistic tariffs and early parole means that prison offers no more threat than a change of walls for a handful of months.

Then you have the problem of unequal duration of sentences. Myra Hindley (may she rot in hell) will never be released from prison; neither were Ronnie or Reggie Kray. Conversely, most other murderers are walking free in 13 years or less. Arguments have raged for years about unfair that is. I quite agree. But don’t release those that have been sentenced to life, make them all serve the same term of justice. Life imprisonment for a life taken. Now that’s fair.

I also agree with the three strikes and you’re out rule. Recidivists have to be discouraged as well as the first time offenders, and for those whose sins are of a significant magnitude, they should certainly also be interred for life.

We have recognisable degrees of crimes i.e., Grievous Bodily Harm, Actual Bodily Harm, Wounding With Intent, Manslaughter, and Murder. And the last act can also be defined by whether responsibility for the act was diminished or not. Terms should therefore be automatic, consistent and on a sliding scale, with premeditated Murder carrying the ultimate penalty.

Technically, this is the idea behind that is supposed to happen in our courtrooms, and yet they rarely do. It is usually reliant on the sagacity of the person deemed to be a Judge, and how they see fit to deal with the sentencing rules they are given as guidelines. A major flaw here is that it has been known for the Judge’s persona
l feelings on the subject to influence the sentences set. The case whereby a young female who had been the victim of rape, was told that a reduced sentence was being given as she played her part in the crime for wearing the clothes that she had, is one incident that springs to mind. That, and the jailing of a cash-strapped pensioner who had shoplifted food. And the drunk driver who caused the death of another person and received a 6-month sentence. Not to mention Tony Martin’s infamous murder of the young intruder, Fred Barras, on his property.

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A QUICK NEWS FLASH…

As I’m writing this, I have just watched the hitting of the World Trade Centres by two airplanes, in what appears to be a terrorist attack. It all seems very surreal, and poignantly brings home that no justice can compensate for crimes of this nature and magnitude.

Three airplanes have been hijacked from Boston Airport, two of which were flown into the World Trade Centre Towers (both lasted one hours before collapsing) and the other appears to have been crash landed on or near the Pentagon.

The general consensus of opinion seems to be that this has been orchestrated by Middle Eastern links, and one can only imagine what sort of justice America now intends to dish out.

Isn’t this how World War 3 starts?

Does this mean that the UK will now be dragged into a new conflict?

How will justice ever prevail here?

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It may now seem to be rather inappropriate to be so dismissive about any Criminal Justice System, however it is suffice to say that none of them anywhere in the whole world will ever stop the ability for a human being to commit a crime. If there’s a will, there’s a way.

None of them work.

None of them.

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