The Future of Crime and Punishment

Crime and punishment is a big problem in the UK. One problem is that we do not have enough space in our prisons for everyone who should be in there. This has been causing problems for some time, with prisoners being released early, but most recently we have seen dangerous criminals given lighter sentences so that they do not have to go to prison at all! This is clearly ridiculous!

So, here are a couple of possible (but not especially serious) solutions to this problem.

1) Send prisoners overseas to serve their time. The UK already has precedents for this, with many services such as telephone call centres being located in India where it is cheaper to run such things. So why not set up prisons in places like Siberia for serious, long term prisoners? Now THAT would certainly be more of a deterant than the threat of a few hours community service!

2) Bring back the death sentence. The British abolished this after a couple of trials that resulted in the execution of people that should not have been, most famously Derek Bentley, the young lad who was with someone who shot a Policeman and was probably trying to tell the shooter surrender his gun, rather than telling him to shoot - the phrase being "let him have it" after the Policeman had asked for the gun! Anyway, we certainly now have plenty of undoubtedly guilty people serving very long stretches... (Well in British terms anyway, where "Life" can mean 12 years or less!)

3) Following on from the last idea (and recent viewing of Celebrity Big Brother) we get "Death Row - The Reality Show" where viewers get to vote for who they think should be executed next. "To execute Bill call 0800 54321 02". I think I may be onto the next blockbuster TV series! :-)

Of course, none of this stands a chance of happening due to our excessing concern for the criminal's welfare. Don't worry about the poor victims - someone I know was attacked recently and the only help he recieved from Victim Support was the suggestion that he move somewhere else! Not very helpful and certainly not the sort of "support" you expect!