The positive
power of
the death knock
In my favourite place,
we were locked in
by 6.30pm
Jill Stephenson
Is four years in prison a harsh sentence for inciting affray? In one sense, I really don’t know. This is because I don’t know what a sentence of four years means.
There was a great furore a few months ago when Kenneth Clarke suggested giving an automatic 50% discount for those who confessed their guilt at an early stage, before the trauma and expense of a court case had been incurred. This was deplored by the opposition, who preferred to stick with the 33% discount that, when in government, its leaders had introduced. Yet it seems that a great many criminals serve only about half of their ‘time’ as it is. This being the case, the instances quoted by Kenneth Roy of malefactors who were guilty of extreme violence, including rape, seem disturbing. If these malefactors were sentenced to four years in prison, presumably they were eligible for parole, at least, in two years. Is that an appropriate punishment for crimes of violence against the person? I doubt that the victims would have thought so.
Yet two years does seem excessive for a couple of daft laddies who seem to have been playing a silly game on a ‘social networking site’ and whose incitement didn’t actually incite anyone. And sending to prison at all the woman who received a pair of looted shorts but was not herself involved in the riots or associated looting seems like overkill.
In the former case, but less plausibly in the latter, there is, though, another consideration. Civil peace – law and order – depends on all of us abstaining from rioting and affray. The recent incidents in English cities demonstrate by how thin a thread that civil peace hangs. It is not merely a matter of panic and scare-mongering, or of heavy-handedness and draconian justice, to react against those who perpetrated it and those who, however hamhandedly, incited rioting without effect.
On this issue above all, the authorities have to exert their power to restrain and to deter. The threat of the alternative – anarchy – is not one to be taken lightly or to be encouraged with lenient sanctions. Our whole existence – for all of us, in whatever corner of society we inhabit – depends on there being civil peace. That is why rioting has to be punished with what may look, at first sight, like disproportionate severity.
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Today’s banner
Taking a dip off Mull
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Scotland safe? Try telling
that to the shop-keepers
who pull down the shutters
John Forsyth
There is a difference between organised crime and the loosely organised opportunism that arises from the intimidation and the lawlessness of
sheer numbers..
John Forsyth has worked for BBC Radio and TV in London and ran his own independent production company in Scotland for 10 years, supplying programmes to BBC Radio 2, 3 4, 5 Live, Radio Scotland and the World Service. He’s a former political editor of Scotland on Sunday and is now a freelance journalist and editorial consultant.
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