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EXPRESS COMMENT

GOVERNMENT WILL PAY FOR FAILING TO TACKLE CRIME

Friday November 28,2008

JUSTICE in Britain has become a laughing stock.

When Labour came to power, seven out of every 10 convicted robbers were sent to jail.

New figures show that the proportion has tumbled to little more than half and the length of jail terms they serve has
fallen significantly too.

Meanwhile the use of soft-touch community sentences has soared by 40 per cent, drastically undermining the role that the fear of imprisonment once played in deterring all kinds of crime.

Part of this is the fault of feeble judges who no longer believe in punishment but mostly it is the result of Government sentencing guidelines that seek to excuse all but the most heinous criminals from a spell inside.

Absurdly, Britain has become a country where someone making a citizen’s arrest is more likely to be charged with a
criminal offence than is the wrongdoer they catch.

It is a place where some high-profile senior police officers appear more concerned with pursuing lucrative severance packages or promiscuous personal lives than with pursuing criminals.

And it is a nation where the “human rights” of convicts are elevated above the rights of law-abiding citizens to live free from victimisation.

Much attention is being focused on the Government’s incompetent stewardship of the economy.

That is understandable. But when it comes to the next election, its wholesale failure to make good the promise to be “tough on crime” will also be very high on the political charge sheet against it.