Boy the police are clever...

[bolt pp]

Rewards for speeders, compensation for drug addicted prisoners, new identities for paedeophiles, rehabilitation for murderers.....
Putting the Great into Great Britain.

 

i dont think so, sorry.

[thetank]

 

Stick them all in prison forever then, especailly the kids.

[roverthtaeh]

If your child was run over, drugged to death, sexually abused or killed you might take a different view.

[Claw75]

Rewards for speeders, compensation for drug addicted prisoners, new identities for paedeophiles, rehabilitation for murderers.....
Putting the Great into Great Britain.

At face value I agree speeders should not be rewarded.  The others areas are not black and white though and there are times when the other situations you described are entirely appropriate.  In my view.

[thetank]

If your child was run over, drugged to death, sexually abused or killed you might take a different view.

Better for Amnesty International that we have a criminal justice system then, rather than the parents of victims choosing the alleged perpetrators fate.

[Newmanseye]

Rewards for speeders, compensation for drug addicted prisoners, new identities for paedeophiles, rehabilitation for murderers.....
Putting the Great into Great Britain.

 

i dont think so, sorry.

Each to their own opinion on this one mate, I believe Rover makes a good point for example, when I lived at my old house both my wife and I coul not allow our children to pla out in the street for the last 2 years of our stay there, The reason?  I hear you ask, well Our local council had started recieving convicted paedophiles in to our community, as a result we had 18 incidents within 6 months, some of which were perverts exposing themselves and others were attempted snatchings.

People of this ilk make a good argument for the reintroducion for the death penalty.

Just my opinion

[roverthtaeh]

If your child was run over, drugged to death, sexually abused or killed you might take a different view.

Better for Amnesty International that we have a criminal justice system then, rather than the parents of victims choosing the alleged perpetrators fate.

I totally agree, but that doesn't mean there aren't some serious flaws in the system.

[GlasgowBandit]

I agree that there should be tougher sentencing for dangerous criminals.  I would argue that there is a case for chemical castration of paedophiles. 

But that is a totally different scenario from folk who are caught speeding, why not give them the opportunity especially at a young age to see the dangers of speeding, they can get the chance to cruise a vehicle at knockhill whilst at the same time learning about the dangers not only to themselves but to pedestrians and other road users by their actions.

The fact is that with the measures in place just now it doesn;t have the desired effect. 

The company I work for have been trying to put pressure on the government for 3 years to introduce a nationwide road safety programme that they have helped co-ordinate in conjunction with the police in Surrey, by all accounts the initiative seems to be very popular and has raised awareness about the dangers of speeding unfortunately it has been a laborious process trying to get the ear of a minister to give it proper backing.  It has taken Esure 3  years to set up a meeting with the appropriate ministers to make sure this campaign is given the proper backing. 

I think that we should seriously look at alternative ways of rehabilitating offenders whose crime is not a serious offence.  It seems though that politicians in some case are very slow to give alternatives their backing for fear that it may loose them a few votes.

the one thing I really dont get is putting junkies behind bars its easier to score in the jail than it is anywhere else. 

[Jinky04]

I think as an experimental scheme it is worth a shot although I would prefer if there was a financial penalty attached rather than handing out free tickets. If there is a causal rise in speeding after the free tickets are introduced, or if it fails to cut incidences of re-offending then stop the scheme and reintroduce traditional punitive measures. My problem with this scheme is that a) the incentives haven't been worked out properlyand b) I suspect there will neither be the resources or inclination for proper measurement to be carried out on its effectiveness.

 In the case of paedophiles/ sex offenders generally, I think first offenders need to be given a greater amount of psychological/ psychiatric treatment to try and change their harmful behaviour. With repeat offenders who demonstrably continue to pose a threat after treatment and are unlikely to change, I would favour life imprisonment (literally) or capital punishment.

[byronkincaid]

People aren't put in prison for taking drugs though are they, it's other crimes that they have commited that gets them banged up right?

[thetank]

Serious flaws indeed, so what's wrong with a bit of innovation like that being displayed by the Fife Police in this example?

Sometimes it annoys me when any proposed solution that doesn't invlove more punishment is automatically dismissed. The people on the right of this argument sometimes assume that anyone who doesn't want to lock people up and throw away the key and/or execute them in a variety of interesting ways is condoning the crime they commited.

It goes without saying that we all agree crime is bad. Calling out for peoples heads is not the only way to express your disgust at that sort of behaviour. Someone commits crime X. I want to send someone to prison for 10 years, you want to kill him. Does this mean I think the crime wasn't as bad as you? No it really really really doesn't. The severity of the preferred method of punsihment is not not not directly proportional to an individuals level of disgust at the crime.

When people come out with potential solutions to growing social problems which don't involve locking up half the country, it frustrates me when their ideas are shot down on the grounds that no-one's testicles are being chopped off.

Why can't an issue such as this ever be discussed without reference to punishment? There's a growing social problem, how are we going to fix it? Discussion of how many bars to put on peoples prison cells should be secondary.

They say an ounze of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Well as punishing a destructive crime isn't really a cure to the damage it has done, I'd say an ounze of prevention is worth a kilo or two of "cure."

The police and community should be involved in a thousand more schemes like this one, some will work, some will not. Please let's not lambast someone for trying to fix things. Administiring lethal injections when the working class step out of line is not a solution, this might be.

An eye for an eye, a kidney for a kidney only really works with transplants.

[thetank]

Apologies for mixing metric and imperial measures in paragraph six.

[Claw75]

very good post tank

[Jinky04]

Good points thomas, but in terms of changing peoples' behaviour or potential behaviour punishment is still an important component. I would certainly agree that policy makers tend to ignore other ways to change behaviour such as rehab and innovative strategy's as well as actually tackling the social and economic factors which increase the propensity of some groups to commit crime but it is very difficult to produce strategies which definitely work. Prevention is better than punishment, sure but prevention of crime is a difficult and costly undertaking.

Dismissing punishment on retributive grounds ok, but keep in mind that threat of punishment does deter a great deal of crime, consciously and subconsciously. Not only that, punishment and our terms of punishment help reflect and shape social norms of behaviour.

[Newmanseye]

Great post as usual Tank, I too believe that innovation is the way forward, yet I can see the potential problems in this potential case.

Paedos and Killers aside, speeding is not a problem, dangerous driving is.  I'm all for education when people act like fools in this case that being the boy racers, If it makes them better drivers GREAT!! if it incentivises people to commit petty road crimes in order to gain entry to a racing circuit well thats where my problem lies.