ARTICLE 1
4,500 serial offenders are let off with caution despite committing at least 15 crimes each – by Jack Doyle – Last updated at 10:30 PM on 23rd February 2012
Thousands of serial offenders are being let off with a slap on the wrist – despite each committing more than 15 crimes.
Some 4,500 criminals with 15 or more convictions were given a caution last year.
Tens of thousands more were handed fines, community sentences or suspended jail terms. Overall, some two-thirds of the worst serial offenders escaped jail, Ministry of Justice statistics show.
The police are handing out more and more cautions, even to those committing offence after offence
MPs said the figures betrayed the ‘soft justice’ system and called for more public control over sentences.
Tory MP for Clacton, Douglas Carswell, said: ‘From November we get to elect our police chiefs. We now need to ensure democratic accountability over the rest of the criminal justice system.
‘So long as we leave it to the Secretary of State, we will never sort this problem out and get the criminal justice system we want and the public demands.
‘Soft justice is a consequence of an unaccountable justice system.’
Sentencing figures published yesterday showed nearly 105,000 criminals with at least 15 previous offences came back before the courts in England and Wales.
More than one third were locked up. But 67,461 were given a non-custodial sentence. Around a third of those, 20,553 were given community sentences and 16,149 were given a fine.
More than 11,000 were handed an absolute or conditional discharge – in effect no punishment at all. A further 8,160 were given suspended jail sentences.
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke wants to promote better reform programmes rather than filling up prisons
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke wants to promote better reform programmes rather than filling up prisons
In 2004 the custody rate for offenders after 15 or more crimes was 42 per cent, nearly 7 per cent higher.
Overall, three quarters of crimes are committed by adults and juveniles with existing records.
Last year re-offending accounted for some 638,153 out of more than 850,000 offences.
Government officials suggested average prison sentences were at a ten-year high, with burglars locked up for an average of 19 months.
Average sentences for robbery and drug offences were also up.
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has pledged to mount a ‘rehabilitation revolution’ to turn offenders away from crime.
He wants tougher community punishments and better reform programmes.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘Overall re-offending is falling but the levels are still too high and we are determined to address the root causes of this behaviour.
‘We are making our jails places of hard work, toughening community sentences and making offenders pay back victims and communities.’
Here’s what other readers have said. Why not add your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards.
This must be the underclass equivalent of getting a bonus (and promotion) for failure. . We are certainly living in very strange times.
– Brian., Wellingborough., 24/2/2012 06:13
Rating 21
Prisons cost money to build, and that money comes from taxation. You can’t have it both ways.
– john, scotland, 24/2/2012 06:03
Rating 4
A far more shocking headline would have been “serial offenders given jail terms”…
– King Cantona, republik of mancunia, 24/2/2012 05:44
Rating 26
The public need to be as enraged about this as they were the riots (which the government couldn’t hide) This situation is an insult to the law abiding public
– dean motley, the Commonwealth, 24/2/2012 05:13
Rating 12
Nowhere near enough detail here. Are these people who have walked free hardened serial muggers and burglars, or recidivist litter louts and casual drug users? There’s a world of difference. But what I really want to see is these three things : harsher, (and hence cheaper) prisons that either deter crime, or make it economically viable to lock up the worst offenders for a long time; a legal framework that permits long sentencing for the worst crimes; and judges who hand down sentences that properly punish the guilty.
– Sean, Up a mountain somewhere, but I’m not saying where, 24/2/2012 04:49
Rating 18
NOT going to prison isn`t working. Send them to prison with two priorities, the primary being to punish and the secondary to rehabilitate. Decent folk deserve protection from criminals.
– Escapee, Sainoi, 24/2/2012 04:36
Rating 23
oh come on..they didn’t mean to they’re of good character really..they had a hard upbringing..they had a bad day nothing’s their fault! yawn..this country is absolutely pathetic!
– mark adam, london, 24/2/2012 02:47
Rating 17
‘We are making our jails places of hard work, toughening community sentences and making offenders pay back victims and communities.’
———————————————————————————————————— In your dreams MOJ spokesman. The crims are almost queuing up to get into HMP
‘Butlins lookalike’. They are doing their best to get ‘put inside’ with dozens of repeat offences, but the legal system won’t cooperate.
– Gordon, Thailand, 24/2/2012 02:30
Rating 14
In the USA it is three strikes and you are out, in other words you get life if you repeat offend twice. However I don’t believe this rule applies for misdemeanours, just for serious crimes.
– Sittingburns, England, Great Britain, 24/2/2012 02:23
Rating 9
Adopt the American system caught three times and you are in for life. After all they have shown they have no respect for society so lock them up forever without parole or possible sentence reduction. I don’t believe it can cost the general public more than these criminals actions are already costing. Plus sack all the promoters and judges who prefer the soft option, protect the victims and forget the bill of human rights unless you consider it from the victims point as it is law and the criminals have already made the choice to be lawless and have rejected the standards of the general law abiding society.
– Toady the Toad, London England, 24/2/2012 02:20
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Am with the Secretary of State (not the Carls Jr toting one from Idiocracy, different morons . . . er people when they’re not morons ) on this.
At least some judges do not believe in enriching prison contractors. Simple enough. If someone steals 1000 sterling worth of goods in 1 year but is locked up at cost of 40+ thousand at tax payer expense for 1 year, he would have done the same damage in 40 years by being in jail for 1 year from some unthinking judge’s punishment – so the taxpayers get punished instead by wastage of painfully extracted taxpayer funds to enrich prison contractor/supplier/jobs system. Let the pettiest criminal be punished in any method by imprisonment (I recommend paying the same amount to the vendor . . . on the spot by the police, no need to waste court time . . .), it is still cheaper overall! And what is to stop the same behaviour from continuing after 1 year in jail?
The judges who ‘let criminals off’ are SAVING England’s economy by saving tax funds which are stupidly spent maintaining prisoners. If the ‘let off’ trend continues, massive funds from PRISON CLOSURES (though a handful of prison contractors/suppliers and gaolers lose their jobs) could be saved. What is worse, a collapsed economy and prison state or a handful of cronies who probably could find another better, more morally and also ethically correct way of making a living than this insidious corruption of civilisational values (i.e. to make a living I don’t care what is involved in my salary – the system is too large and unwieldy for MOST ordinary people to fathom, though some heavier thinkers take on the thankless work simply to validate the educations they never had or will never use because some crony was given the job instead . . .)?
MPs said the figures betrayed the ‘soft justice’ system and called for more public control over sentences. Tory MP for Clacton, Douglas Carswell, said: ‘From November we get to elect our police chiefs. We now need to ensure democratic accountability over the rest of the criminal justice system.’ This should read ‘From November we now get to ensure COLLUSIVE PROFITEERING over the UNCORRUPTED PORTIONS of the criminal justice system (at tax payer expense). Did Douglas Carswell fail math, or is this MP just too daft to figure out the facts in the comment on the above 2 paragraphs? Soft justice is better than a Theft/Extreme Wastage of tax funds on pretext of being tough on criminals, like so many paedophiles (MP) in a Church (Parliament) victimising the children (voters) . . .
Perhaps the best way to punish petty theft or minor crimes would be to bar repeat offenders with electronic bracelets or such, from patronizing shop chains they offended in (keep stealing enough, the offenders would not be able to enter most shops in the end) WHILE saving imprisoning costs.
ARTICLE 2
Something is Wrong when a U.S. Soldier Costs $1 Million a Year – Yahoo! Contributor Network – By Calvin Wolf | Yahoo! Contributor Network
According to CNN, the Pentagon comptroller said during a congressional budget meeting that it cost “about $850,000 per soldier” per year in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments reached a more expensive conclusion: $1.2 million per soldier per year. The estimate is supposed to increase for 2012.
The Pentagon comptroller, Department of Defense undersecretary Robert Hale, said higher weapons operating costs were “a good part that’s probably 50 percent of the budget” when explaining the $850,000 per-soldier statistic.
Something is wrong when the U.S. is spending around $1 million per soldier per year to fight in Afghanistan. It’s more wrong when we’re getting “probably” and “a good part” and other ambiguous terminology. While I’m struggling to pay my rent on a public school teacher’s salary, I want to know why the Department of Defense lacks hard-and-fast figures on its overseas spending.
I want to know who allowed military spending to swell to the point that enough was being spent per individual soldier to pay 21 Americans at home a comfortable $40,500 annual salary.
Weapons operating costs? Are they firing shells of pure gold? Platinum bayonets? Are Humvees suddenly being made by Rolls-Royce? Hearkening back to the wars of generations past, how would generals like Pershing, Patton, MacArthur and even Westmoreland view a figure like $850,000 per man per year?
When the nation still struggles to pull its way out of a recessionary pit, why are we spending like this? The recent riots over the Quran burnings at Bagram Air Base, explained by ABC News, show our billions of dollars have not helped us secure and solidify the notoriously unstable nation of Afghanistan. If we’ve been unable to turn Afghanistan around in over a decade worth of active intervention, why do we continue to burn through taxpayer dollars like they grow on trees?
One million dollars per soldier has not given us anything resembling a true victory in Afghanistan. It’s time to go back to the drawing board. It’s time to decide whether we want higher unemployment and an inefficient military or whether we want an effective balance; a nation where we’re willing to help the poor and unemployed and forego gold-plated bullets.
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More collusion on the part of term limitless legislators (governors, sanators congressmen etc..) with the military contractors and suppliers. Ideally as in the 9th and earlier crusades, anyone who wanted to go to war would have to get their own horse and supplies. Today they should allow the same. A millionaire/billionaire instead of being a wasteful consumer of luxury and exuding decadence and laziness that influences his lessers, should be allowed to buy and maintain his own fighter jet, tank, artillery or even warship, if he wanted to. This would save money, foster a sense of personal pride and take the funding issue entirely out of the equation for government, while at the same time, keeping citizens safer by ensuring ‘Big Government’ won’t be able to decide to spend much needed tax payer monies on war instead of civilian expenses. That is, if the ‘big boys’ want to go to war, they can jolly well fund out of their own pockets, instead of using tax payer funds who are not so big.
Perhaps 2 different taxpayer fund pools? Perhaps an opt out for taxpayers in that separate fund for citizens deciding that their funds will not be used to fund wars or maintain nukes and missile silos that will never be used? That when dismantled AGAIN give some contractor a nice tidy sum of tax funds? The citizens should only vote for legislators that are very clear (and on penalty of quitting their posts if failing to keep their word to amend or change constitutional articles or laws in a given timeframe, that allows States to use taxpayer funds for things that they cannot afford) that the nation is after all the people and those tax funds may not be theirs to use for those who opt out for war.
Such obviously civilian derived funds to create cheaper sources of food, better housing, or for necesssary welfare – instead of political personnel perks, parliamentary privileges (which taxpayers vote that politicians will not be entitled to tea and crumpets at their expense? Or special funeral funds – while serving a bureaucrat get paids a salary after the bureaucrat retires they have a pension – that should be given no more than the same amount of time spent working – who the hell is going to give a civil servant an entire or more than normal 401K equivalent for that region for just dying?!? Especially when they can afford their own funeral etc..?)
$16 Muffins, $8 Coffess, $5 Meatballs : Justice Dept. Spending Rapped
The smoked salmon is ‘awful’ and the pork escallops are a ‘disgrace’: What peers said about their exclusive cafeteria (which costs the English £1.44m a year to subsidise)
If a soldier costs 1 million a year to maintain (that Afghanistani Naan and side of meat DO NOT cost USD$100 for the whole month to requisition . . . think . . . ), then 20 years of a single soldier in service will cost, 20 million which means 29.9 401Ker’s retirements. That same soldier retires in the same manner as well later AND at taxpayer expense! So think about that ‘Letters of Marque’ format or ‘Privateering’ concept where ALL military are voluntary and paid for by themselves. This would create massive jobs (as well as massive capability to wage war – instead of fostering useless plutocrats – how many Battalions of soldiers, or Nuke Subs and navy crew is 40 billion worth Mayor Bloomburg able to support and fund? But the law would have such ‘GLC’ people as lazy and indolent symbols of excess who keep oligarchies that result in worsening laws and Orwellian social conditions in the USA that could fund the entire US military themselves but do not – and who are ready to leave the country with ALL the taxpayers’ funds at the first sign of trouble.
I bet you that under the Plutocrat’s personal funding, the price of a single soldier will suddenly drop to 10,000 a year per soldier . . . thats how much the taxpayers are losing yearly because of government/military contractor-supplier collusion USD$990,000 in all likelihood.). Create that second pool of tax funds specific to persons who believe in war and those who believe in peace (at least those who opt out from allowing their funds to be used for military purposes) by the civilians for civilian purposes – and that means transparent accounts to determine if a hammer or toilet seat do not cost USD$4000 each instead of USD$4 at discounted prices – the rest as of now is being handed out in extreme yearly salary raises when GDP is dropping, and way beyond inflation rates to boot. Anyone able to consider these issues had better act.
malaysiandemocracy 