Bring back tougher laws!

I think in the UK tougher laws should be introduced, here is a list of crimes and what i would do i the circumstance.

Petty Stealing (shops, supermarkets) of goods worth under £10 - Forced voluntry work for 4 weeks in the selected store where the crime was dealt, if they refuse they must serve 2 months in prison.

Kidnap: 11 years in prison.

Serious theft, house break in, car theft - £1000 to the owner, 8 years in prison.

Rape: 14 Years in Jail and public humiliation

Serious Fraud: Pension denied, 2 years community service, and/or 10 years in Jail depending on seriousness.

Attempted murder - Hands amputated and 30 years jail time.

Murder - Death by lethal injection

Brutal you might say? But tougher laws do need to be introduced, it would deter crime in a huge way.

What are your thoughts on this subject? Should tougher law be introduced?
Feel free to share your punishment for crimes.

Arn't you the one who is a member of the EDL, fearing the rise of sharia Law?

well to me your proposals would send this nation in a similar direction with your stonage approach to criminality. the Irony is, many of the extremest muslims you protest about, would agree with you on these tougher punishments.

I basically agree with your examples, but the problem with "tough new laws" is that they tend to be abused by those in power for their personal gain.

Are you serious, chopping off someones hands?
Tougher penalties are not going to deter theft crimes the more desperate people become. I do think sex crimes should have a tougher penalty especially against children. Many other crimes are just committed out of desperation or with the desire to go to prison because they can't make a living in the outside world. 3 hots and a cot ya know.

"What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

If a nation were founded on this basis, it seems to me that order would prevail among the people, in thought as well as in deed. It seems to me that such a nation would have the most simple, easy to accept, economical, limited, nonoppressive, just, and enduring government imaginable — whatever its political form might be.

Under such an administration, everyone would understand that he possessed all the privileges as well as all the responsibilities of his existence. No one would have any argument with government, provided that his person was respected, his labor was free, and the fruits of his labor were protected against all unjust attack. When successful, we would not have to thank the state for our success. And, conversely, when unsuccessful, we would no more think of blaming the state for our misfortune than would the farmers blame the state because of hail or frost. The state would be felt only by the invaluable blessings of safety provided by this concept of government.

It can be further stated that, thanks to the non-intervention of the state in private affairs, our wants and their satisfactions would develop themselves in a logical manner. We would not see poor families seeking literary instruction before they have bread. We would not see cities populated at the expense of rural districts, nor rural districts at the expense of cities. We would not see the great displacements of capital, labor, and population that are caused by legislative decisions.

The sources of our existence are made uncertain and precarious by these state-created displacements. And, furthermore, these acts burden the government with increased responsibilities.

But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.

How has this perversion of the law been accomplished? And what have been the results?

The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy. Let us speak of the first.

Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.

But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.

Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.

But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.

When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

Continued...

Continuing...

"It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.

But, generally, the law is made by one man or one class of men. And since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws.

This fact, combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law. Thus it is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.

Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter — by peaceful or revolutionary means — into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws! Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.

It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution — some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

What are the consequences of such a perversion? It would require volumes to describe them all. Thus we must content ourselves with pointing out the most striking.

In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. These two evils are of equal consequence, and it would be difficult for a person to choose between them.

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them..."

Taken, in part, from The Law by Frederic Bastiat

My other half works in the prison service as forensic psychologist, mostly with sex offenders and i have this arguement with him quite often. He is all for treatment and rehabilitation, but my arguement lays in the fact that the treatments do not work.... Even with all of the treatment programs available e.g. C.A.L.M. (Controling anger and learning to manage it), S.O.T.P. (sex offender treatment program) etc the rate of re-offending is still high..

That, and the arguement that he thinks that sociology/psychology is a "science", when it clearly, as a humanaties subject, is a cop out for those too thick to take on a REAL science (he hates the fact that I have higher physics and geology degrees)..

I believe that with the rebelious nature of the human being, we need REAL controls on our behaviour.. A prison cell equipt with x-boxes and satelite TV IS NOT a detterant.. Criminality needs to be dealt with an iron fist, justice NEEDS to be SEEN to be done, and prison should be soooo bad that no-one in their right mind would risk going there..

For serious crimes like paedophilia, murder, and rape, i beileive that they warrant life sentences that MEAN life... That coupled with a prison that has the worst conditions imaginable, no death sentence, because justice needs to be seen to be done, AND a death penalty is an easy way out for the perp... Plus we do not have the right to take the life of anyone , because then we become like them....

Everything else should be a boot camp, including community service.... I have to admit, i was a naughty rebel as young girl, but the army sorted me out , i believe that it would them too, AND they would repay society with their sweat and frustration, but when they "graduate", no doubt after being back squadded a few times; they would be proud of themselves and have self discapline..

[edit on 073131p://f47Friday by Selahobed]

i dont think i could ever feel comfortable in a society that enforced the death penalty. misscariages of justice whilst not too common, still exist, i would hate for myself or anyone for that matter to be wrongly accused of murder and executed only to be discovered to be innocent years later

news.bbc.co.uk...

"What may in the end prove even more telling, however, is the result of a study by the Columbia School of Law in New York.

After examining every capital punishment case passing through the appeal courts between 1973 and 1995 its lawyers found that seven out of 10 death sentences were reversed because of serious error in the original trials."

if you can honestly say you would be fine with taking that risk then thats cool but i for one would much rather have to rebuild my life after an undeserved spell in the nick than be put to death for a crime i did not commit.

news.bbc.co.uk...