Star comment: We must end this madness
Just a day after Staffordshire Police revealed knife crime had risen by 50 per cent, spare a thought for their West Midlands colleagues.
The youth, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted the offence and was given a two-year youth rehabilitation order with a six-month intensive supervision element and three-month long night time curfew.
In another case of judicial fatuity, a driver who ploughed into a motorcyclist while trying to flee from police was spared jail. Daniel Kennedy ignored a request by an officer in an unmarked car to stop amid suspicion he had been using his mobile phone at the wheel.
He drove through a red light narrowly missing a bus before hurtling though narrow residential streets at over 50mph and hitting a motorcyclist head on. All while having no insurance or a full driving licence.
For this he received a 12-month suspended jail sentence for two years.
And in a third case that epitomises our flawed, unfair, and preposterous legal system, a drug dealer from Walsall given a four-year jail term for dealing crack and heroin, who appealed his sentence has had his case thrown out.
It was quite right of the Appeal Court judges to dismiss Shaquille Ologitere’s case – but how much did the whole thing cost?
We all know that lawyers are not cheap – nor is court time.
Why are convicted criminals like Ologitere given the chance to contest the length of a sentence? It makes no sense. The Express & Star makes no apology for returning again to the pertinent issue of our broken criminal justice system.
If Theresa May truly wants to get back onto a strong and stable footing, then why doesn’t she become the Prime Minister responsible for restoring law and order? Pitiful sentences, nonsense appeals, victims and police officers made a mockery – that is what modern day British ‘justice’ looks like.
It is time the criminal justice system was stopped being treated with kid gloves and that someone with real clout firmly shook it up. In isolation the cases highlighted may not seem anything spectacular but when you look at the wider picture you soon realise we have a national scandal on our hands.
Let’s end the madness.
