The lunatics truly have taken over the asylum.
KT53
GloucestershirePosts: 7,531
News report today of a man being jailed for 12 weeks for kicking a seagull do death. Horrible thing to do and I'm not trying to minimise that.
However, in January this year a 17 year old was in court for killing two pedestrians when over the drug driving limit. By use of a legal loophole he escaped prison and received just a 2 year driving ban. His father is a serving police officer, but that would obviously have had no bearing on the outcome.
Which, in reality, is the greater crime?
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As amancalledgeorge said, based on what you've said, we don't know the circumstances of either offence. Was it the first time the kid had taken drugs and then driven a car? Or was he doing it habitually? Why was he taking drugs - did he do it knowingly? Does he have some other issues that have made him susceptible? Did someone spike his drink? Did the chap kicking the seagull lash out when it stole his chips? Was it harassing him or his child? Or did he go looking for a creature to hurt and then attack it simply because he could? Perhaps you know more than you've said, but I wouldn't come to the conclusion that either judgement was wrong based on what you've said here.
Shades of grey. You have to hope the judges in each case saw the background clearly enough to make the calls they did. They don't always get it right, for sure. But things aren't always what they seem from what's written in the papers.
That said, I do think the sentences available to, and imposed by, judges for some crimes are too limited. I believe strongly that cruelty, whether to animals or humans is not treated seriously enough. Penalties imposed for trapping or killing wildlife are too light but so are penalties for vehicular killing whether from speeding, drugs or alcohol or sheer stupidity.
I also don't think assigning corporate repsonsibility to industrial accidents is fair. Businesses are headed by people and the decision makers should carry the can for deaths from bad construction, poor equipment, shoddy testing, evading regulations, exploiting loopholes. I don't suppose we'll ever see the directors of Boeing in prison for letting that aeroplane go out whilst knowing about that automatic correction issue nor the people who made or installed the dangerous cladding on buildings like Lakanal or Grenfell nor the councillors and council staff who permitted that work to go ahead.
But Lakanal or Grenfell - the cladding is not inherently unsafe. It was used in the wrong way and installed badly. So you can't blame the manufacturers, who cannot legislate where or how their product is used. The designers who specified it? Well they presumably believed the test data which said it isn't flammable. It's arguable that they should have asked more questions. At the moment we don't really know how those decisions were taken. Perhaps the next part of the enquiry will produce more clarity on that. The builder? Culpable for poor workmanship, very possibly. But not for the lack of fire doors or proper ventilation to the stairs or even for there only being one stair in the building. The council for poor maintenance - it would seem from what we know, certainly. But not for the cladding - they employ experts who advise them and who will have told them it was safe - probably in writing. Councillors especially have no technical understanding of construction - why would they not believe reputable firms who tell them it's fine? The Government for Building Regulations being inadequate? Maybe, but we don't, as a country, want to have to pull down old buildings just because new ideas and new materials have come along. If the Government proposed that every building that doesn't comply with current fire regs has to come down, there'd be huge protests at the demolition of The Tower of London, or St Paul's Cathedral, or Blenheim Palace.
No one will take the blame, most probably, because no one person/organisation was to blame, most probably. The same can't be said of Boeing.
I've also seen reports that that cladding didn't get the right tests to check it for flammability and I do think that if builders/engineers/architects/ expert advisors don't ensure materials are correctly used, especially in multiple occupation domestic buildings where people can be asleep when a fire breaks out they need to be held to account and I hope the planned enquiry gets to th ebottom of it all and that th enecessary changes to procedures and standards are applied. They weren't after Lakanal.
I have confidence in our judiciary. My worry is that I would be falsely accused of a crime and by sheer bad luck had 12 jurors who, though ‘good men and true’ were also spectacularly dim witted and unable to follow the argument (listen to all those vox pop comments on Brexit!). Having said that, I had reason to appear in a murder trial once and was struck by the complete attentiveness of the jury.