www.metro.co.uk/news/838365-road-rage-assault-victim-disgusted-at-courts-ruling
Guy beats up mimser, fined £400. Drew blood, i thought that was the difference between grievous and actual? and i thought that meant much stiffer penalties?
£400 to stop them and give them a going over? I could handle that. Cheap!. I'm going to get my hair cut and a tattoo. Now where are those forum mimsers ;-)
* apologies for $ instead of pounds, not on my own machine :-(
corrected currency symbol for you
Last edited by: VxFan on Wed 18 Aug 10 at 14:27
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Sentence does seem a bit light.
Even if it was dealt with as actual bodily harm the maximum penalty is still five or seven years, I forget which, but either way the judge has plenty of headroom to give him a short stretch.
I see the prosecution is appealing the sentence as too lenient, which they rarely do.
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Someone needs to show him how to open a MacDonalds Ketchup Sachet properly.
Aim at chips, not at face.
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I believe I'm lucky in not being familiar with the 'Metro', but their in depth reporting is astounding :-)
One thing they do do is describe the protagonists as 'neighbours'. Would we be suprised if there was more to this than meets the eye ?
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The Metro is distributed free at Underground stations in order to keep the cleaners busy!!
Like bora I'd suspect there's more to this than is disclosed in the report. Also, despite their obvious appeal to the public there is little evidence that 'short sharp shock' sentences actually do any good.
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I don't see any statement that the man committing the road rage was a convict.
The thread title suggests that he somehow managed to break away from his chain-gang and indulge in a bit of road rage before being recaptured.
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...I don't see any statement that the man committing the road rage was a convict...
He is a convict - a convicted person - the moment he pleads guilty, which happens before he is sentenced, and almost always at an earlier hearing.
So strictly speaking the thread title is correct.
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But he wasn't a convict when he indulged in the road rage. He was in fact technically innocent at that point.
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Anyway before the boring discussion starts to see if he is a convict or not.
Instead of the fine he should have been banned from driving for a year. That would hurt him more in the long term than sending him to jail.
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>> Instead of the fine he should have been banned from driving for a year. That would hurt him more in the long term than sending him to jail.
Much cheaper too.
Can't really think of any downsides to this approach? Why don't they go with this. Seems a pretty sensible way of dealing with this type of offence?
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...Ban him for a year...Can't really think of any downsides to this approach?...
Er, it's illegal.
The convict has been convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
A driving ban is not a sentence open to the court for that offence.
The options are fines, community work, probation orders or jail.
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The law should be changed then. It about time we had laws that hurt the criminal. I mean a £400 fine. The criminals in this country know there a fair chance that they will get a stupid pointless fine or a meaningless jail sentence where they will have access to 3 square meals a day,TV, games consoles, gym and endless other perks.
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Not entirely disagreeing with you, but I employ some people for whom a £400 fine would be absolutely devastating.
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The amount of violence in the country is, in a large part, a symptom of the fact that punishments are often so pathetic.
There is little actual justice and little deterrent for the real scumbags, because many of them know the kind of punishment they will get.
I wonder what would happen if the victim, rather than appealing the sentence, just popped next door and smashed his neighbour's face in instead.
No doubt a prison sentence, because if you smash somebody's face in, in retaliation for having your face smashed in, that is somehow worse than having your face smashed in for criticising somebody.
There is a lot about Saudi Arabia, that I deeply disagree with, but I have to say that the justice system does actually seem to be a "justice" system - at least on my interpretation of the word.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11045848
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Cutting someone's spinal cord as punishment for paralysing somebody in a fight is surely going too far, but...
Back in the 80s, there was a to-do about the possibility of setting up an Islamic "state within a state" in Bradford I think. On the old 'Today' programme, Brian "the red" Redhead interviewed an Imam about it. "Come, come" said Brian, "you can't really want people to have their hands chopped of for stealing can you? There'd be hundreds of amputees!" (I paraphrase - it was a long time ago).
"Oh, I don't think there would be many at all" replied the Imam. Too right!
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..."Oh, I don't think there would be many at all" replied the Imam. Too right!...
Two things are required: fear of detection and fear of punishment.
At present, too many criminals think they probably won't get caught, and if they do the punishment will be weak.
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Road rage convict fined $400 - Iffy
