Stop Baby Ps killer going free

[modeller]

He is going to get plastic surgery to protect him.


http://www.thesun.co....k-free-on-Friday.html

[jackthehat]

The DM are at fault (other publications are similarly culpable) because they delight in publishing photographs of these individuals thereby causing the situation that a new identity (at the tax-payers expense) is required....

[emmie]

so we shouldn't know who they are, or what they have done, does the same go for the likes of rapists, murderers, and terrorists, not sure i understand that, if they don't commit crimes, then they wouldn't be in the news, or in the papers.

[vodkancoke]

I personally don't read the DM but if I remember correctly their faces were on the telelvised news, so are they to blame as well?

[jackthehat]

The courts have already punished this odious individual of the behalf of all of us........
He now has to be protected (as we ALL have a right) from the gangs with pitchforks and flaming torches who wish to extract some sort of 'mob-justice' from him.

[sir.prize]

And the possibility of THAT Shoesmith woman will probably get £1m + compensation is obscene

[vodkancoke]

Well I think hatchett-faced Shoesmith should be the one paying for his cosmetic surgery and new life out of her disgusting (possible) settlement

[emmie]

so that could apply to all people who commit a crime, and their photo ends up in the newspapers, and on the TV news.

[jackthehat]

Yes.
If the media choose to publish their photographs and whip the mindless hordes into vigilante gangs........

[emmie]

what about programmes like crimewatch where the public are asked to look out for many of these criminals, as do the police on TV news, when a loon is on the loose. Sorry no one is going to convince me that it is right that any criminal should get anything at all, don't do the effin crime, then you won't end up with your mug splashed across the dailies.

[jackthehat]

Of course.
However, the media bears a responsibility for this type of situation arising.

How many convicted and released 'undesirables' do you suppose live close to you and in obscurity?
They have served their time and been quietly re-assimilated into society. The Police and 'other' agencies don't have to waste time and resources on protecting them simply because they have not been splashed all over the front of the 'dailies'......stoking up the righteous indignation of the mob.

[ummmm]

The courts also have more facts than the redtops...

[emmie]

so if he were to get his wish, and then goes out and commits another crime, who's going to recognise him. Fingerprints i suppose, DNA, no sorry still can't be convinced. Not part of the baying mob, just think that our judicial system is too weighted in favour of the criminal.

[jno]

commits another crime? What, finds another relative who's going to kill a baby? This doesn't really sound like a repeatable offence.

[jackthehat]

If he commits another crime (such as what, exactly?), hopefully, he will be arrested and charged with it in exactly the same manner as everyone else.

The length of his sentence may well be a concern, but, as has already been stated, his crime was one of 'dereliction' rather than participation.......and having served the time given to him, he should now be left to get on with his miserable little life........but NOT with the constant threat of violence from 'the mob'.

[emmie]

any other crime. Perhaps we should have 3 strikes and you are out. If ten people stand around whilst one stabs a bloke to death, according to a case the other day, the others are as culpable, so surely he is, no the sentence wasn't long enough, but then i would have sent them all to jail for life, no parole. Looks like we shall have to agree to disagree.

[andy-hughes]

Thanks for your observation that my comments are 'humane' Prudie, although that is not actually my position.

My stance on this - along with jackthehat's is a matter of the application of the law, which has not sentiment attatched to it, or it fails to operate correctly.

Criminals are punished according to the law, and once they have served their sentence, then they are free to live in society unmolested or in fear of their lives.


You can scream about 'haning being too good for them ...' and all the rest of the self-righteous claptrap that always populates threads like this - but that is not how a civilised society works.

The vigilante mob must never be allowed to take the law into their own hands - that is the way to a lawless soceity where only the strong (and self-righeous / opinionated / vicious / violent) survive, and I don't wish to live in a world like that.

The law is imperfect, as is the sentencing system a lot of the time, but until someone comes up with something better, it is what we all, and I stresss all, live with.

[Prudie]

I fully agree that he and others released should be 100% protected from any vigilante action or people taking the law into their own hands. What I can't get my head round is certain crimes just cannot be absolved by serving a prison sentence. There have been several high profile murders of children in the last few years and to me those perpetrators were so deranged or amoral that I can't see how they should ever be released into society with a view of living lives of any value. I agree in this particular case he wasn't the main culprit and his crime may have been just to 'do nothing'.

[Gromit]

I am with em10.
If a relative or close acquaintence commits a crime, then we all know we are guilty too. And deserve any hounding and grief because we were born of the same parents.

[andy-hughes]

Gromit - you cannot seriously be suggesting that being a close relative of a criminal means that you are subjected to the same sanctions, either in law, or as you seem to suggest - outside the law?

That's breathtaking!

[jno]

Gromit may, in paraphrasing em's post, have inadvertently made it look extremely breathtaking, andy! But perhaps it didn't take much paraphrasing to do this...