Burning Our Money has, just for once, a post on a subject that is not about money, waste of, government ineptitude with ours, tax or other economic matters - well not directly anyway.
The post tackles the question of the death penalty - or lack of it on our statute book and in so doing highlights two cases in point.
Referring to the fact that, against the public's wishes MPs voted to abolish the death penalty, BOM states, in a linked related post, that "The truth is that hundreds of innocent people die in this country every year because our rulers have shamefully failed to deter murderers." Therein lies the problem in that whilst the implied promise by MPs was that 'life would mean life', the exact opposite has proved the case. It could also be argued that MPs are not our 'rulers' - as seems to be thought - but are in fact 'representatives' of their electorate and as such should pay attention to those views and vote accordingly.
Unfortunately, as we all know, the last section of society that MPs listen to - until it is election time once again - is the electorate, which is the problem when the subject of our democracy is discussed. Getting on my hobby-horse once again, it is necessary that a re-call system is introduced and introduced damn quick, with the basic requirement that it is the electorate that has the say over who gets recalled and why, coupled with complete devolution of power to local authorities, but I digress (again).
To return to the subject of this post, let us consider an alternative and that is that as the 'softly softly', 'politically correct', 'human rights' - call it what you will - approach has failed to curb the levels of crime, especially murder and violence, perhaps it is time to adopt the complete opposite and introduce a 'zero tolerance' approach to all crime, coupled with the re-introduction of the death penalty.
To those 'bleeding-hearts' that may well pour scorn on this suggestion, there is only one response - if you ain't tried it, don't knock it!
3 comments:
Nope.
Life sentences for violent criminals and murderers are absolutely fine by me (i.e. they will stay in jail until they die), death penalty is not.
There was that bloke recently who was released after twenty or thirty years because it turned out he was innocent. Do you seriously wish that he had been executed?
MW, I am not that 'hard' - if I could be sure life meant life then fine, but it won't while we have the bloody left in the ascendency. If that guarantee cannot be given then the death penalty has to come back. Zero on everything else though - no compromise! And austerity too while they are 'inside'
"There was that bloke recently who was released after twenty or thirty years because it turned out he was innocent. Do you seriously wish that he had been executed?"
That was 20-30 years ago. With today's advances in forensics, and the prerequisite that it would only apply in a 'standing over the dead body clutching the weapon and laughing' case, why not?
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