Thursday 14 June 2012

Tagging: Accessory to Murder

‘They can do anything that they want because the law won’t do anything. The police do their job – they take them in – but they just have to let them go.’

So says the mother of murdered Steven Grisales, responding to reports that the youth who stabbed her son to death for nothing did so after the bureaucrats and rule-writers of the so-called justice system had done everything in their power to ensure that the violent criminal was free to kill. They refused to punish him for robbery or burglary or any of a catalogue of offences, so now they are forced, at least for a little while, to finally do something.

1 comment:

Daz Pearce said...

There's a massive problem when people are having to reach the middling stage of their criminal career before facing even the risk of a custodial sentence.

I've never been one for 'exemplary sentencing' and there are indeed questions about what should be done with an individual once incarcerated. Part of their rehabiliation has to come from within, but the system can help those who want to help themselves.

The key is - accepting that relative poverty, a tough childhood or whatever automatically causes these things and should therefore be handled with leniency is an insult to those who endure hardship and do not descend into criminality, or use their tough life as a smokescreen for becoming a law unto themselves.