Sense and Sensibilities: The Criminal Justice System.

I've just been invited to join a group on Facebook calling for a "review of minimum sentences applied to violent crimes".

I have not joined, but let me explain:

While my sympathies lay with Ben Neilsons family, I just do not believe longer sentences necessarily work, and that's the only reason. The criminal justice system in Britain is certainly one of the more humane, despite calls from the far right for the return of corporal and capital punishment, but it still doesn't actually tackle the problem: there are no evil people, just ignorance and stupid actions. Anyone who kills, from the soldier to the psychopath, from the slaughterman to the executioner, believes they are somehow justified, or exempt from societies rules.

This is why I believe in rehabilitation as opposed to punishment: Education, not Legislation. (And you can quote me on that). These people already hate society, that's why they do what they do, so punishing them is just going to make them worse. I'd like to make it clear that they MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO GET AWAY WITH IT, but the focus of the criminal justice system must be on stopping them doing it again. They must be removed from society so that they cannot harm anyone else, but they must not be relieved of their responsibilities by just locking them away or stringing them up, as that would be "letting them get away with it", making us no better than them, and all at the taxpayers expense!

But I still think even this is missing the point, treating the symptom while ignoring the cause. Harsher jail sentences for paedophiles presupposes that children shall continue to be abused, and seems to me little more than a witch-hunt where we get to satiate the same animal instincts as drive the rapists, murderers and paedophiles themselves, using innocent children as bait.

This is not one of my more popular points of view!

But I'm not interested in being popular, (except on election day, of course) any more than I am interested in indulging my more base lusts, I'm interested in protecting children and creating a fairer society, and that rests solely in the realms of education.

Children look to their fathers (or equivalent) for guidance on how to conduct themselves within the 'tribe', girls looking for a blueprint of their future partners, boys for a role model of how to act and react. Later on in life the school system takes over and the teachers take on the responsibility of role model. People do not respond well to being told what to do, but look for those that lead by example, responding better to encouraged good behaviour than they do to punishment for bad behaviour, which just leads to frustration and resentment. (This generally applies to all social animals, such as chimps and dogs.) Taking this as a starting point we can start to 'fix' what Mr. Cameron calls our "broken society", and puts into action Gandhis words:

"We must become the change we wish to see in the world".