Why are the judges so lenient?

Why are you being an idiot? Those are statutory limits, not my opinion. So everyone should be executed? Someone who shoplifts £5 worth of sweets from Tesco should be treated the same as someone who murders 20 people? Road traffic offences are the same as Sexual offences? Assault is the same as Assault occassioning grevious bodily harm? GBH is the same as GBH with intent? Don't think so

But you guys say the system is too lenient and we need to make it harsher. When we provide examples of harsher systems like the US or Thailand which all have higher crimes and criminals in jail proving that they don't work. The logical step will be simply to kill all criminals since prisons do not work and hey cost us too much money. You should have the courage of your convictions if you want to eliminate crimes altogether.

But as already said it costs just as much if not more of the taxpayers money for the death penalty.

But as already said it costs just as much if not more of the taxpayers money for the death penalty.

But you guys say the system is too lenient and we need to make it harsher. When we provide examples of harsher systems like the US or Thailand which all have higher crimes and criminals in jail proving that they don't work. The logical step will be simply to kill all criminals since prisons do not work and hey cost us too much money. You should have the courage of your convictions if you want to eliminate crimes altogether.

Actually, I don't say our system is too lenient. I believe our system should become even more lenient. Yes, the US is failing because they are harsher, but Norway is succeeding in preventing re offending because, among other factors, they are far more lenient. In the US, you can get over 1000 years imprisonment. In the UK, murder is a mandatory life sentence. In Norway, it's capped at 21 years, yet they have the least reoffenders.

Actually you did. You said assault on police officers should carry four times the punishment of that on a civilian. I would have thought a civilian who has been subject to an assault is more likely to suffer and be traumatised from an assault compared to a police officer who are trained to get physical and are more than able to take and receive a fair bit of physical violence and would have thought police officers need not be nannied. That is the reason I assumed you would like us to adopt much longer and harsher sentences. But seems as if your strand is not as straight forward as I assumed,

Wasn't an opinion, was just the statutes (Although now I realise they both have the same sentence, got confused with intent to resist arrest!) Personally though, I do think that offenders are more culpable if they attack any public sector worker while doing their job. Yeah, they may be trained for it and stuff, but it still shows blatant disregard for people who are just doing their job. Most people who are arrested for assaults probably done it in a moment of drunken madness, however when your drunk, you can still recognise police officers and attacking them, in my opinion, shows that there is deep-rooted disregard for the law and individuals rights.

You do realise how many men are falsely accused of rape/

Nowhere near as many who are guilty. The false accusation rate for rape is roughly 2%, the same as other crimes. However, it's expected that roughly 94% of rapists are never punished in any way.

Nowhere near as many who are guilty. The false accusation rate for rape is roughly 2%, the same as other crimes. However, it's expected that roughly 94% of rapists are never punished in any way.

There are three categories in court: "Guilty", "We dunno" and "The woman's a liar". It's not helpful to anyone to lump the "We dunno"s in with either of the other two, unless you have a hate agenda against men or women.

I do agree with you - but, "the woman's a liar" is fairly common response when in reality it's a "we dunno".

Personally (and this is with more than just rape) I feel we do a disservice to many victims of crime. There are studies that show that victims recover much better if their assailants are punished. I feel that we owe them more than we give them. Many crime victims are treated appallingly - if we can't find a way to imprison more criminals, then we should provide better victim services.

Back to rape though, I think it's actually at a point where we need to find a way to hone the "we dunnos" into guilty or not guilty. There are sites and forums where rape victims chronicle their efforts to recover every day for a decade. On these forums, the majority not only saw their rapists receive no punishment, but were also subjected to a lot abuse from many other sources. Would you look at the ten year daily entries from someone who struggled with their rape/abuse constantly, and say "no, they're not guilty because there was no semen on you."?

How do you propose to pay for such long sentences?