Brighton cyclist jailed

[blackbike]

But he's demonstated that he isn't in control of his actions and that he can't be trusted to take drugs which might help him in this repect.

And because of these qualities he's killed someone.

So why not lock him up for ever to stop him killing again?

What does it matter what his intent was? That he can't control himself and has no intent to kill won't be of help to the next person he kills, or much consolation to the family of that person.

In 18 months time he might get annoyed at a shop assistant or a barman. Would you like that employee to be a relation of yours?

[Edwards]

But he's demonstated that he isn't in control of his actions and that he can't be trusted to take drugs which might help him in this repect

That again sounds like the average downtown Saturday night. Except the drug is not prescribed and increase the violent tendencies.

Again the only claim about the drugs were made by the defence, they are not a reliable source of information. The actions as I explained were those of what is classed as a sane person not somebody showing any sign of any violent mental health issues. As in wanting to hurt another person and enjoying the act or stop the person from ever doing the same thing again.

I am not claiming that this man is not violent but am claiming he do not have any significant mental health issues.

Edited to add: because this man pleaded guilty the mental health claim would not have been able to be questioned by the prosecution.

[thirdcrank]

I think it's worth remembering that it's a while since he pleaded guilty because he was sentenced at an adjourned hearing. That's because the sentencing is delayed to allow the preparation of reports. This is the role of whatever they now call the Probation Service. It's their job to look in some detail at the offender and their circumstances and to assess how they might respond to the various sentencing options available to the court. On the day of the race, the prosecution will formally outline the defendants "antecedants" which is mainly a list of any previous convictions, which the judge will have had all along. The defence counsel then address the court against that background. I fancy the scope for fabrication is narrow and anything in the defendant's interests should have been passed to the probation officer. Nowadays, a judge is increasingly tied by sentencing policy so the defence counsel is really just making sure that their client gets as much credit as possible for anything that can be mentioned. I don't think it's possible for the defence to mount a sort of ambush at this stage, based on a total fabrication.

[Edwards]

Tc I am not suggesting that any thing was fabricated, just that the defence would stress anything they can in mitigation. As they should.
My main concern is that people with mental health issues get a bad press as it is also face a lot of prejudice. As I have stated on the facts as reported in this case the actions of this man does not match those of somebody with the claimed illness.

[thirdcrank]

I don't claim to be any sort of an expert on mental illness and even less on people whose apparently criminal behaviour may be influenced by mental illness or medication prescribed for it. I seem to remember that their defence team has quite a difficult task in suggesting that such an illness is a cause without somebody deciding it is the cause because then the only option is a hospital order.

[blackbike]

I think anyone who has killed a person should be locked away for ever.

Nobody can be sure they won't kill again, even the alleged experts.

Locking killers away for ever would be expensive, but so is monitoring released killers and paying for people to assess whether killers should or should not be released, and so is housing them and paying them benefits because their criminal records make them unemployable in many cases. And the cost to an individual who is killed by a released killer is the highest price that can be paid, and that paid by the family is a terrible one too.

When you consider the huge financial costs of releasing these people, plus the possible emotional and financial costs of another death and another wrecked family should another killing occur, it is probably cheaper to keep them locked up for good, especially as once that decision has been made nothing need be spent on rehabilitaion, only incarceration.

[Edwards]

I certainly do not claim to be any sort of expert but I do however know the symptoms of what was claimed and the ramifications of being sectioned even without committing any sort of violent act.

I am trying to show that there is a lot of difference between the defence claiming something and even paying one of the so called experts to support their claim just to get a reduced sentence. There is an awful lot written about care in the community unfortunately not all of it matches what actually happens. Yes there are mistakes but for the vast majority of people concerned they are much less of a threat to the public than so many people who drink to much.

From my position and personal knowledge the actions of this man at the time were not of those with the claimed problem.

What should happen to people who do use violence is not for people like me to decide.

[cycle tramp]

Deleted

[blackbike]

'I think anyone who has killed a person should be locked away for ever.
Nobody can be sure they won't kill again, even the alleged experts.'

How about we lock everyone up, that's me, you, and the rest of the world, at birth, and then no one gets to kill anyone in the first place. That way everyone is totally safe all the time. Nothing to worry about, no tricky situations, no risk at all... it could be fun. we could have piped in television and computer games and stuff. We could even have stationary bikes for everyone in the corner of our rooms.

Only a person with a very poor opinion of all his fellow humans could advocate such a policy.

I prefer to have evidence that action needs to be taken to prevent a person killing again before taking any. That a person has killed someone already provides such evidence.

Of course cycle tramp, if you feel you need to be locked up to remove any possibility that you might kill someone in the future then I suggest you either arrange your imprisonment privately with your friends and family or speak to your doctor.

If this Brighton thug was kept in jail until he dies, not only would he not kill again but there's a good chance that at least some of the violent thugs on our streets would think twice before assaulting innocent people. That'd save some lives.

[kwackers]

It'd be a rare person that wouldn't with the right provocation hit someone else. The rest is just a question of how unlucky you're feeling...

[Tonyf33]

Nice one cycle tramp, you've just imprisoned for life those who kill when they themsleves would be killed. Those that have had horrendous torture and abuse from their assailant over many years and then snap because they can't take it any more.
Personally I'd take anothers life if that was the absolutely ONLY thing that would stop them from killing me or those close to me. A lifetime in prison is not the kind of thoughts going through ones head in such scenarios (rare as that might be) of that I am totally sure. To punish someone for the rest of their life for defending themselves (or others) would be a criminal act in itself IMO.

In this instance someone killed another albeit it was unintentional but repeated another million times likely it would have been a case of common assault at worst. To punish such with a whole life sentence is completely wrong. In civilised societies we realise that human beings are fallible and irrational at times and do things that have outcomes that are massively removed from the intial intent that is why we have sliding scales of punishment for such occasions I beleive.

[thirdcrank]

It'd be a rare person that wouldn't with the right provocation hit someone else. The rest is just a question of how unlucky you're feeling...

Although the first part of this is self-proving, taken as a whole I think this is quite wrong. Most people experience various levels of provocation - some quite serious - in their daily lives without immediately resorting to violence. If this were not so, the world would be fighting in lumps. Of course it's a sickening experience coming close to being knocked off a bike and the disappearance of the culprit down the road at speed probably prevents a lot of shouting the odds. OTOH, when riders do catch up with a driver in traffic, it seems pretty rare to me that they go beyond shouting the odds. As I hinted above, I think that the fact that the defendant was mob-handed and the harmless appearance of the deceased have helped him lose his inhibitions here.

[kwackers]

It'd be a rare person that wouldn't with the right provocation hit someone else. The rest is just a question of how unlucky you're feeling...

Although the first part of this is self-proving, taken as a whole I think this is quite wrong. Most people experience various levels of provocation - some quite serious - in their daily lives without immediately resorting to violence. If this were not so, the world would be fighting in lumps. Of course it's a sickening experience coming close to being knocked off a bike and the disappearance of the culprit down the road at speed probably prevents a lot of shouting the odds. OTOH, when riders do catch up with a driver in traffic, it seems pretty rare to me that they go beyond shouting the odds. As I hinted above, I think that the fact that the defendant was mob-handed and the harmless appearance of the deceased have helped him lose his inhibitions here.

I see what your saying and dont disagree. But if the first part of my statement is correct then the second has to by definition be correct. If you hit someone you'd be exceedingly unlucky for them to die. So fundamentally how you're punished is down to how unlucky you are.

My point really is against the general principle of simply locking up anyone who might throw a punch since I think we're all capable of it given the provocation.
In this particular instance based on what little I know I think the sentence is about right.

Of course there are a number of 'bullies' out there who regularly throw their weight around and imo people who regularly come up before the courts should have their offences treated somewhat more seriously than they seem to be currently.

[iviehoff]

Only a person with a very poor opinion of all his fellow humans could advocate such a policy.

Your next statement suggests that you have such a poor opinion.

I prefer to have evidence that action needs to be taken to prevent a person killing again before taking any. That a person has killed someone already provides such evidence.

Obviously that is a logical fallacy rather than evidence. But I think the main misunderstanding is that you have a distorted view that most unlawful killings are committed by psychopaths, paedophiles, bank robbers, knife gangs and drug barons, whereas in reality these are a small minority. Does the abused spouse who kills their abusive other half need locking away for life? Does the post-natal-depressive mother who smothers their baby and then fails in their suicide attempt (the mother of a friend of mine) need locking away for life? Does the person who kills their armed burglar need locking away for life? Does the surgeon whose knife slipped need locking away for life? A lot of these people don't even get custodial sentences, and quite rightly so. Most unlawful killings are in the family and the rest of us just aren't at risk, but because they are so common and don't even make the newspaper we tend to be aware only of the shocking, rare ones. The cost of locking all these low-risk prisoners away for life would be very, very large, not just to the public coffers where the financial costs of locking them away are large, and to the environment of needing additional prison capacity, cost to the unnecessarily broken families, loss of economy, etc.

If this Brighton thug was kept in jail until he dies, not only would he not kill again but there's a good chance that at least some of the violent thugs on our streets would think twice before assaulting innocent people. That'd save some lives.

150 years ago we used to think that. People would be hanged or transported to Australia for what today would be considered a minor theft. Yet rates of crime were high in those days. The deterrent effect of draconian punishments is frequently over-estimated by those who have failed to examine the evidence.

For you, it's seems you don't mind too much if a lot of people stew away in prison for all their lives rather pointlessly and at high cost to society (a cost you have underestimated), provided a couple of people's lives are saved. Other people feel more discomfort at locking people away for the rest of their lives pointlessly, the majority who weren't going to murder again. But plainly these divergent opinions are a matter of taste. (As an aside, being locked away for the rest of your life is probably more unpleasant than than capital punishment, an argument some people use in favour of banning capital punishment, in that in fact we have a worse punishment available.) But actually this is just the kind of argument that jobsworth-in-elf-n-safety uses - no cost is too high to save a few lives, hence all the absurd safeguards removing very low risks at very high costs. In reality life is better if we take a few, carefully considered, risks when the cost of guarding against it is high.

[meic]

150 years ago we used to think that. People would be hanged or transported to Australia for what today would be considered a minor theft. Yet rates of crime were high in those days. The deterrent effect of draconian punishments is frequently over-estimated by those who have failed to examine the evidence.

I think that this is a bit of back to front logic.
The draconian punishments existed because there were high rates of crime, not vica-versa.
Also there were high rates of crime because there were extreme causes of crime.

The threat of hanging did not necessarily prevent my great-grandparents from stealing because they were starving to death anyway. The threat of 6 weeks community service is ample deterrent to me because I can afford to buy enough food.

Of course when IDS gets his way and squeezes all those who fail to find jobs the need for crime will increase once more. So the punishments will have to increase as well.
I think that he forgot that the dole was a way of preventing the poor from getting dangerous, not, as the Daily Mail says, a generous handout.

Back on subject, the threat of jail is quite useful for making people like me tow the line.
I doubt it will make the hotheads keep their temper but they should still go inside or it will spiral rapidly out of control.
It may seem like a good idea not to jail them because it will not do them any good but it is a good idea to jail them because it will do the rest of us a lot of good.

Whenever the prison authorities harp on about jail not helping to stop re-offending they are only concentrating on the tiny minority of hardcore that they deal with. For the vast majority of people the THREAT of jail does a lot of good and the prison authorities pay little attention to that vast majority of people for whom jail does work, very well!