Sentence should fit the crime

Twiggy they do give proper sentences I recieved 6 mths probation and a £ 40 fine for stealing a car and wreaking 5 others in a police chase and assaulting 2 police officers. Now that is a bit over the top dont you think.

Why don't the courts hand out proper sentences for the crime? it's COST that's what it comes down to it costs too much to keep them banged up so the courts are under pressure to not hand out custodial sentences Result petty crime gets a community order ( whatever that does ) and the criminal is back to do it all over again.

I am sick of hearing about proper treatment for prisoners we have gone soft some of the scum they return to society should be locked up for good Life should mean just that the victim doesn’t come back after 15 years.

What we need is to reinstate secure medical facilities where sex offenders can be treated and detained and we should have prisons like Dartmoor reopened for the hard criminals prison needs to be a deterrent not just a removal of liberty in a place that resembles Centre Parks no wonder we have no confidence in the law.

I agree with Andy that things will get worse in this country regarding insufficient punishment - the reasons for this are narrow-minded Liberals & Human Rights. We have a legal system geared towards rewarding lawyers, judges, etc and looking after the criminal, both at tax-payer's expense. Victims are not taken into account - you do not choose to be a victim of crime, but at some point you do choose to commit a crime. Punishments should be just that, not an soft option - bring back capital punishement & shoot the yobs with plastic bullets.

Karl the first incident you speak of would be investigated & would probably result in no prosecution due to the fact you were driving safely & the child ran out in front of you.

The second incident is much more clearer-it would be murder or maybe manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsilbilty-simple

Sentence should fit the crime. So, what should the sentence be for the following?

I am driving down the road when a child runs from within parked cars, I hit them and they are killed yet I was not speeding.

I come home to find the love of my life in a bed with another man. I get my gun and kill them both.

There are different degrees of murder which makes it quite hard to deal with even though the events may have been clean cut.

Welcome to this great country of ours guys.
Things WILL get far worse before they get better

A short while ago in Newcastles west end two youths had an altercation,apparently they were both 16yrs old,unfortunately, one of them will not see 17 as he was stabbed throw the neck.The other one was taken to court and given 18 months for manslaughter, the reason for this lenient sentence according to the judge was because the guilty party said he was sorry and he forgot he had a knife his hand.If ever there was a need to remove a so called judge this has got to be it,if it were my son lying dead I would personally be waiting outside the prison gates on the day the guilty one was released, the sentence was absolutely pathetic..

Not many people seem to know how many pensioners are murdered and these are the only ones I have heard about

74 pensioners murdered by thugs, many others seriously injured because the law and police have ASBO’s and a hundred other ways to let criminals off and other criminals let out of prison early.
England's most senior judge has called for shorter jail terms for murderers.

14 June 2006 - 53 people sentenced to life since 2000 in England and Wales have already been released on licence, ministers have disclosed. The release of the lifers, including rapists and murderers, was "absolutely disgraceful" Tory MP David Davies said.
Go to the web site below and write to your MP and say what you think the law should do before you are someone in your family is killed.
http://uk.geocities.com/pensioners_deaths

Policing is no different to any other business in this country, it's about money and results. How do you make money easily and at the same time, show you are clamping down on crime - Speeding. This is where the crime does not fit the time, in actual fact, only just recently, they increased the amount of points you can have on your licence, why, so you can pay more fines, especially if your a repeat offender.
If the time fit the crime, then you would simply be made to go slow! Something they have got a grasp of in parts of Spain. If you exceed the speed limit, a speed camera captures it and changes traffic signals 100 yards down the road to Red, no ticket, no points, just made to go slow - how fitting and guess what, it works, there are less speeding offences and thus reduces the amount of accidents and deaths - how strange!
Speedy

WOW... I'm in America & the same things are happening here. For me, I seen it start in the late 60's when my first driving ticket made me go to court. They called me last... this made me listen to the other crimes. Interesting thing happened, it made me want to go back & just listen more. (long story short) This made me realize that the Judges are at fault for our current world going in favor to the criminals. The only one higher is the President/Head-of-Parlament/Dictator. So... if the judges are only following orders,... WOW#2!

What is happening to British Law and order? As reported today a rail passenger has been given a criminal record for stretching out his legs and putting his feet on a seat. Elderly pensioners, unable to meet the extortionate cost of council tax have been imprisoned. Yet violent yobs, drunkards and shoplifters are to escape penalties if they promise to behave for as little as three months! The lunatics really have taken control of the asylum.

I say keep them in a bare cell long enough for them to go insane or commit suicide, or change our "soft" country into a place where people die from their mistakes instead of learn from them.