Crime

 

Its Cure

 

At the very outset we must recognise that laws will not stop crime. This is very obvious from the number of criminals breaking laws every day. We need a change in the outlook of people. Their attitude to each other must change, and so must their way of  thinking and feeling. But this change of outlook must be a voluntary thing. All this silly “political correctness” (and the ‘thought police’) just proves how ridiculous it is to expect people to change their values simply because someone says “You must change your values.”

 

We ‘absorb’ our values by association, as described in “Normality”, from our parents, teachers etc., i.e. people who we “looked up to”. So, similarly, we, as ordinary people, should have good, virtuous leaders that we can “look up to”. Just where these people are to be found in today’s modern mess is a problem, and we would certainly be better off with no leaders at all than the leaders that we have. As was pointed out in “The Myth” those that we have got at present are worse than bad, and so until real democracy comes along there is absolutely no hope.

 

When real democracy comes along then laws will be passed by common consent, and will thus be accepted by the population as being in the interest of all, rather than being imposed from above for the benefit of   some. There will be many who will not ‘agree’ with certain commonly accepted laws simply because those laws cut across their personal desires, but providing those laws are in the interest of the community then they will accept them (because they are “peoples” laws and not “leaders” laws). There will always be, unfortunately, some who will not obey laws, howsoever enacted, and for these people punishments/deterrents will have to be furnished.

 

The basis for all punishment should be the setting right of the wrong committed. The present system of half hearted prison sentences, that “incarcerate” someone in a second rate hotel for a short period, at the publics expense, and then release that person into the world with a golden handshake, is absolutely ridiculous. All crimes have a victim. That victim should be recompensed and the perpetrator should be the one to do it, in such a way that a) he will not dream of doing it again and b) the recompense should be made public and be sufficiently painful as to act as a powerful deterrent for other would be perpetrators.

 

If a person is “mugged” then the “ill gotten gains” should be repaid several fold and the cost of the rehabilitation of the “mugged” person should be born by the “mugger”. The entire financial responsibilities of the person “mugged” should be born by the “mugger" until the “mugged” is sufficiently recovered to return to his/her former life. Obviously the more serious the attack and the more serious the injuries the more responsibility would have to be taken by the attacker. However, the attacker would not be allowed to shirk his own responsibilities “in lieu”. These he would have to continue to shoulder, in addition to his victims.

 

In the case of murder there is no way that the victim can be repaid, but there is almost always one or more dependants, be it spouse, children, parents etc and the provision for these people should become the primary responsibility of the murderer for the rest of his life. His normal responsibilities would become secondary, but just as compulsory. Now this would be a LIFE SENTENCE with meaning and deterrence. At present murder is so lightly treated that it is committed just as carelessly as robbery. The return of the death penalty solves nothing as far as the victims dependants are concerned. It gives the murderer a very short period of punishment and leaves his dependants to rely on state hand outs. It also demonstrates that killing is not necessarily wrong, because the state can do it.

 

The same sort of logic could be applied to burglary, embezzlement, and all forms of theft and vandalism. The essence of the scheme should be recompense to the victim. At present it appears as though it is recompense to the Crown (a fine), and the victim has to make the best of it, whilst the public has to support the criminal (in prison) and his dependants (on Welfare/National Assistance or whatever pseudonym is the current vogue).

 

It would not be necessary for the victim to come into contact with the criminal, because the criminal could well be housed in some form of working prison and allowed to earn money there, not only to pay “his debts” but also to keep himself, and his jailers, whilst there. If necessary he could help build other such establishments, but in all probability, after word got round, few such establishments would be needed.

 

As for sex offenders, a good example can be found in the Middle East. A thief there has at least one hand cut off. Now there’s deterrence, and, if carried out fully, no possibility of re-offending!

 

Certain present ‘Crimes’ are nothing more than breaking laws that are on the statute book because of  lobbying by pressure groups and by OBE seekers. These laws are petty laws laid on top of existing laws, which in themselves should have been sufficient had they been policed properly. Their addition is concurred to by the politicians because they are more nails in the coffin of freedom and additional means of creating fear, submissiveness and revenue. These laws are plainly silly, should be removed, and the original laws, which are meaningful, should be used. One example of this is the present on-going furore about road speed. The law already requires a driver to drive with due care and attention, and contravention of this requirement is a criminal offence. If the road is devoid of other road users and pedestrians there is no need for a speed limit of 30 mph or 40mph etc.

 

Thousands of motorists are hauled before the courts, and have substantial sums of money taken from them, not because they have had an accident, but simply because they just might (in the opinions of others not on the spot) have had an accident.  On the other hand, if the road is full of school children, and their mother’s cars, then even 10mph may be unsafe. The driver should be allowed to use his own on the spot assessment of the situation, and drive with the due care and attention required by the circumstances.   The OBE brigade will say that no driver is fit to use his own assessment and that their judgement is always best, but who, in the event of  an accident is responsible? Not the OBE seekers. If the driver gets it wrong, then he is responsible, and should without doubt, be dealt with along the lines laid out above. He should not be simply fined, or given a short jail term, and then allowed to start all over again. Disqualification for life would be a good deterrent. It would be quite startling how quickly “real” punishment and deterrence put an end to avoidable road accidents. Particularly if parental training and care were to be brought into the matter. Can a parent relinquish responsibility for his child’s safety training and behaviour, and pass it on to the state and any passing road user?

 

A further example of silly law duplication is the nonsense about possession of guns. The reason guns were required to be licensed (and in some cases firearms certificates held) was to protect the interests of the landed squirachy and their deer/pheasants/game from poachers. The result was that virtually all guns were traceable. All those guns, or as many of them as could be collected without bringing trouble to the squirachy, have now been removed and allegedly destroyed, due to parliamentary knee jerk reaction to the insane demands of the OBE seekers. Since the removal of all those firearms the number of shooting in this country has gone up by several orders of magnitude. The firearms that are now being used to kill people are not licensed and therefore are untraceable. The law that prohibited murder is still just as much in force as it was before, but the silly gun law changes have achieved absolutely nothing, other than cause resentment within the legal gun using community. In  a proper democratic society the laws would be formed properly in the first place and there would be no chance of these silly knee jerk amendments for political gain.

 

When a proper system is in place, and bad leadership examples have been eliminated, eventually crime will cease to exist.  Those who will be “looked up to” will be the every day, good living relations and neighbours, who will have no cause to behave unsociably, and after all, crime is nothing other than serious unsociable behaviour.