Sentencing

It’s an old chestnut, but there have been a few sentences of offenders recently that have made me stop and think, what the hell is going on. I am sure I am not the only one who has been thinking about sentencing and the fact that crime and consequences seem to be out of kilter.

For too many years we have taken a softly, softly approach with drugs, theft, anti social behaviour etc. and a culture of toleration and understanding and trying to ‘help’ the poor offenders that perpetrate these crimes. In particular I would single out the Youth Justice Service and their weak and watery staff and policies that do nothing other than put barriers in the way of addressing poor behaviour and the concept that such behaviour must have negative consequences.

I fully understand that feral yobs and the like are the product of their upbringing and this is often the real cause of the problem. YJS workers telling me that it is pointless forcing parents to attend Parenting classes and that they must be persuaded to does nothing to give me any confidence that they are achieving anything other than pandering to the wishes of those responsible for criminality.

We are failing to address the poor behaviour of too many young offenders who are escalating into more and more serious offending. I had started to seriously wonder how our prisons were going to cope with the dozens and dozens of out of control young men and women who, after years of lackadaisical and ineffectual supervision, punishment and rehabilitation, eventually commit such serious offences that they are sentenced to life with recommendations of minimum sentences of twenty or more years. I thought we must start building more prisons now or there won’t be any room.

Now I see how our masters are going to deal with this problem. These young men and women that should be behind bars for a very long time are no longer being given long sentences. Even the judges have given up or been directed to stop sending serious offenders to prison for long periods. Here are a few examples.

July 2009, Colt Wesley Welch was in a vehicle that police tried to stop. He fired a sawn off shotgun at the officers. He later ran off from the vehicle and threatened other officers with the gun. He was eventually arrested. The gun was found to have been stolen from a burglary and later sawn off. We are supposed to be getting tough on gun crime. The sentencing guidelines are supposed to be 5 years just for unlawful possession of a firearm. What did Welch get for not just possession but firing the weapon at unarmed officers? Five years!


The yobs with numerous convictions for violence, breach of ASBO etc. who beat a man to death with a hammer because he dared challenge them regarding their behaviour. The hammer wielder got life with a recommendation of minimum sentence of 9 years 2 months. The rest of the gang got between 12 and 28 months.

I do understand that in the longer term Government policy and strategy must change and do more to remove this cycle of behaviour and address some of the social ills and irresponsibility their policies have partly brought about. In the meantime, sentencing must reflect public distaste and provide a proper deterrent to this criminality.