A good judgement

This how justice should be administered, rather than throwing people in jail at every turn:

A bottle-wielding thug has been spared a prison sentence – so he can pay for his victim's cosmetic surgery.
Off-duty soldier David Holberry, 24, was left with a deep scar on his forehead when Robert Hart smashed him in the face with a bottle in Preston city centre.

Now – in a landmark ruling – a judge has ordered Hart to pay his victim £2,500 after hearing the life-changing surgery was not available on the NHS.

Private Holberry has backed the decision to spare his attacker jail and said: "If he goes to jail, how is that going to help me?"

I was just surprised that it was a landmark ruling. Yes it was a stupid and vicious attack but anything that keeps people out of jail has to be a good thing, especially if that person has a job they would probably lose.

As well as the compensation, an absolute must in all cases IMHO, there is a punishment/deterrent element:

Hart, of Leyland Road, Penwortham, pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding. He has no previous convictions.

Wayne Jackson, defending, said: "He is ashamed of what he did, he acted on the spur of the moment in an argument which had nothing to do with him."

Judge Brown ordered him to pay his victim £2,500 and placed him on an 18-month community order together with an unpaid work requirement of 200 hours.

Although something a bit harsher may have been appropriate given the use of a bottle

Prison Sentences

I have mentioned a few times that I am generally against prison, especially the way we use it in this country. However when we do use it it has to be used effectively and not brought in to disrepute.

I was therefore saddened to read this post on The Magistrates blog:

As Jack Straw looks desperately for a way out of the prison crisis (one that is mostly of the Government's making) there is talk of extending the early release scheme to free a few more spaces. So here are the numbers as they stand today:
Maximum sentence available to magistrates: 6 months. Let's call that 180 days. Defendant pleads guilty (most do) so one-third reduction. That's 120 days. That is automatically reduced by half, leaving 60 days. Current early release is 18 days, leaving 42 days to serve. That's six weeks. Prisons don't release at weekends or on bank holidays, so those with sentences expiring then are released the previous Friday, possibly knocking 2 more days off the sentence. If, as suggested in the press, early release is extended to 30 days, then the most that magistrates can hand down will be effectively 28 to 30 days - roughly four weeks. Hardly Judge Jeffreys is it?

A six month sentence lasting 4 weeks does nothing but bring the Magistrate and their court in to disrepute by making them look weak and irrelevant. If we consider why we use prisons:


1. As a punishment - 6month reduced to 4 weeks is hardly likely to cause any inconvenience to those who have got to the point where they are committing crimes that need a stiff sentence. Indeed I am sure anyone given a six month sentence and being released after 4 weeks will be a laughing all the way to the pub to tell their mates. This means that..

2. As a deterrence - said mates are going to here stories about how easy it all was (embellished no doubt but that doesn't matter) and hardly be deterred.

I have experience from my Army days that leaves me to believe that these types sentences can even even be counter productive.

I'd always understood the Magistrate's court system was about local people dispensing with local petty and less serious crimes, so that justice could be seen to be done and local circumstances considered. All this will do, IMHO, is push more cases to the Crown Court and cost us all a lot more money.

The more I read on the Magistrate's, and similar blogs, the more I realise that our legal, judicial and penal systems are degenerating in to farce, which isn't good for anyone.

I wish I knew the answer to this, but whatever it is it surely doesn't involve politicians - or at least if it does it has to be to impose some sort of control on them so we don't get knee jerk reactions every time the Sun's leader writers so boo.