And Justice For All?

Is Justice blind? Or is she just stupid? I can't help thinking that there's something seriously wrong with this country. It seems that every few days another flaw in the system is exposed in the media. In the last week a violent and dangerous paedophile who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a three-year-old girl was sentenced to life. However, due to our fatally flawed criminal justice system he could be back on the streets in just five years.

People are absolutely outraged, and rightly so. This man should spend the rest of his life in prison. He is obviously a danger to the public, and that's what prison is for: to protect the rest of us from dangerous criminals. For some reason the law seems to see prison as a punishment only. If it's supposed to be a punishment, why are prisoners given satellite TV, video game consoles and various other forms of entertainment? How is that a punishment? The vast majority of these people are probably happier in prison than out of it. The whole system's gone mad.

It's not just the judges that are the problem either. At the beginning of this month 250 Police Officers raided the home of two innocent Muslim brothers, shooting one of them in the process. Luckily he survived, or it would have been another Jean Charles de Menezes. The Police involved in the raid seem to have had very sketchy information and have so far refused to reveal how reliable it actually was. These heavy-handed tactics certainly didn't win them any friends in the largely Muslim area where the raid took place.

I'm sure there are very competent Police Officers out there, doing their best and making sound judgements. We only get to hear about the things that go wrong on the whole, so our information could be biased towards the negative. Still, from where I'm sitting, I don't think I trust the Police any more than the average politician.