It’s no secret that violent crime, particularly involving knives, machetes etc is out of control. The way I suggest countering this would be to allow police powers nationwide to carry out stop and search at their discretion, with mandatory prison sentences of at least 1 year for anyone caught carrying an illegal weapon.
I believe this would immediately reduce knife crime significantly as stop-and-search had remarkable success in both London and other cities such as New York, with the prison sentence a strong deterrent to anyone considering breaking this law.
Unfortunately, prisons are too full for imprisonment to be a deterrent. Foreign criminals would have to be deported, the release of offenders who committed hate speech crimes and possibly even the reintroduction of the death penalty would be needed to clear cells.
I agree prisons are too full. I was going to put another post on here but it said my limit had been reached for today.
Basically was going to say for £2.5 billion, you could create 30,000 extra prison places.
Obviously you’d want to deport foreign criminals, which will help, but it’s not sustainable to have prisons at near full capacity every year. Better to have too many places than too few!
I was going to suggest it as part of a broader ‘crime and public safety’ bill, which I’ll probably do tomorrow when I can start another thread.
£2.5 billion is ABSOLUTELY worth it though. I don’t think you’d actually need to lock up that many knife offenders before the message sunk in that you are likely to be stopped and searched if you’re looking suspicious and you WILL go to prison if you’re carrying a weapon.
As for death penalty, I sympathise with the desire for it, but personally I’m well against it. Not just because of miscarriages of justice which are inevitable, but because I don’t believe the state should have the right to murder captive people, whatever their crime. Most people who get the death penalty in, say, the US are either mentally too impaired for it to be a deterrent or else are involved in things like gang wars where death is an occupational hazard anyway.
Plus, death penalty basically guarantees that every murderer pleads not-guilty, costing a fortune in years-long trials and appeals. Take the southport scumbag whose name I don’t want to say, he admitted guilt, saving thousands of hours of legal back and forths over months, when he might have got off on a technicality anyway, but if it had been the death penalty, he’d have forced the families to go through the harrowing year long trial period, recounting the issues in graphic detail every day, being cross-examined in court, etc.
Overall the death penalty solves nothing. Even if everyone on a whole life term without parole was guaranteed the death penalty, that’s still only a few dozen people in the last few decades. And many, like Fred West, Harold Shipman etc do us all a favour themselves inside anyway.
If prisoners had to work to earn their keep, there wouldnt be any barrier to opening as many prisons as needed. The question would be what kind of work could they do to pay for their stay.
The middle east and Pakistan have the death penalty. As a deterrent this does reduce crime. I believe we need a deterrent but I am not sure about the death penalty. Maybe something in the middle. Just so you know, the House of Lords would need to pass this law and it’s members are a large number of Bishops, ecclesiastical etc. I think you need the Lord Chancellor and Judges approval at Inns of Court. It should be debated but with the add-on discussion of, “well if the death penalty is not the deterrent then, what would be acceptable?” The UK is attracting criminals from abroad because we are too soft. I want my country to be safe again and the police and justice system are not cutting it.
In principal I am in favour of stop and search powers but i think they would need to be very specific. The police and the state are prone to over reach that we must guard against.
For example:
2 officers must be present, both with bodyworn cameras.
No requirement to identify yourself unless a weapon is found.
Everybody searched issued with a card detailing the officers involved and a link to be able to retrieve the video footage.
In Glasgow when knife crime was rampant, the sentence was 5 to 10 years just for carrying a knife. It soon stopped.
We are to soft as a nation we need to get back to how people thought during the war times, respect, courage, good values, decency and toughness.
We need airport scanners in shopping centres, senior schools and college’s.
Look at public spaces, dance clubs music venues.
Knives and guns should be removed from society
