English Justice.

[flecc]

A young man who hadn't entered a shop during the recent riots but took a packet of cigarettes from just inside a broken window got 18 months imprisonment. Another with no record whatsoever was also imprisoned for an even more minor offence, just two of very large numbers who were harshly punished. I make no comment on whether those sentences were right or wrong.

Wealthy restaurant-chain owning Anthony Worrall-Thompson steals expensive wines and cheeses from Tesco, not once but several times over a number of days. He gets a police caution.

It's called our justice system.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

You need to know all the facts. maybe those young men had already been convicted of several other offences, and maybe they had done a lot more, but the press only reported their side of the story, or maybe everyone knew they had done more but didn't have enough evidence to convict them for other offences. To me, they participated in rioting, which is serious, even though they were only convicted of minor offences. If the courts don't come down hard on them, it'll be the next fashionable thing to do on a saturday afternnoon. Don't forget, an awful lot of them got away with it, who also need to be discouraged from doing it again.

 

[JuicyBike]

I think it's called policing on the cheap, using well publicised heavy handed sentencing, often shockingly excessive, to cover for poorly resourced forces.
I know of one woman imprisoned after a first offence of receiving stolen property, having been given a pair of shorts stolen from JD Sports during the riots. Her children were placed in care.
I'm all for strong policing, but carried out justly and resourced properly. Police should not have to resort to scare tactics and justice has to be proportionate to avoid the growth of self-policed ghettos and suburban gated communities.

 

[flecc]

You need to know all the facts. maybe those young men had already been convicted of several other offences, and maybe they had done a lot more, but the press only reported their side of the story, or maybe everyone knew they had done more but didn't have enough evidence to convict them for other offences. To me, they participated in rioting, which is serious, even though they were only convicted of minor offences. If the courts don't come down hard on them, it'll be the next fashionable thing to do on a saturday afternnoon. Don't forget, an awful lot of them got away with it, who also need to be discouraged from doing it again.

As I said: "I make no comment on whether those sentences were right or wrong", it wasn't a comment on them. My post was about sentencing and treatment disparity for an establishment figure. Not the only recent one of course.

Lord Taylor (£11,000 expenses fraud) and Lord Hanningfield ((£13,000 expenses fraud) have recently both been released from prison after serving barely a quarter of their sentences, and MP Jim Devine simlarly did only a quarter of his sentence. "Ordinary" people have to serve at least a half of their sentences, regardless of whether they have a clean previous record or how decent their past.

Previously we've had Lord Archer having trips out of prison to go shopping unaccompanied in local towns, and there's also Ernest Saunders, the ex Guinness director and fraudster. He was released after serving 10 months of a five year sentence on a medical pretext, later shown to be completely untrue, but he was not recalled to prison.

The Worrall-Thompson case is just the latest in this saga of an utterly corrupt justice system.

 

[mike killay]

You cannot but feel unhappy about such disparate sentences, and also short stays in prisons.
I can see the need to punish rioters severely, after all, it was not just the theft but the participating in the riot which was the major part of the offence.
The real problem is that celebrities appear to get off lightly.