It's been a curious few weeks for our judicial system. I don't mean that in an "isn't that funny" sort of way. I mean that in a "[insert moral outrage here]" sort of way.
The last time I checked, the primary purpose of prison was to protect society from dangerous people and secondarily to make those people safe to re-enter society. Punishment comes into it, yes. But it's not the priority. So I have to wonder how throwing a pie gets you sent to prison. Unless my good friend Jonnie intended to go on a violent pie throwing rampage across the streets of London, perhaps throwing the odd grenade as well, I find it very difficult to comprehend how it's justifiable to waste a perfectly good prison space on him.
In a country where we're constantly being told that the prison population is far to high, in which thousands of prisoners are released early because of overcrowding, and in which a rapist can serve as little as two years, I fail to see how sitting on a car bonnet and poking a posh lady with a stick is worth 18 months in jail. Don't get me wrong - if I were a posh lady I wouldn't like to be poked with a stick either, and if I were a media oligarch I wouldn't appreciate having a pie in my face. But if my little sister was raped and the rapist served only 6 months more than a bloke who poked a lady with a stick, I would be seriously pissed off. Not because I see prison as a place to punish people, but because in my eyes rapists are more dangerous than blokes with sticks or pies.
This isn't about Jonnie or Charlie, or really any of the anti-cuts brigade who've been sentenced and imprisoned. It's about a biased judicial system putting the public in real danger by improperly using prison spaces and wasting taxpayers money at a time when that money is needed more than ever. Jonnie could have been given 6 weeks community service and a hefty fine, and I strongly suspect that if he had pied anyone else in the face that that is exactly what he'd have got. If Mr Gilmour had sat on the bonnet of my car and smashed one of my windows I expect he'd had also gotten off with a hefty fine and an ASBO. Of course, if you don't believe me, you're welcome to read the Daily Mail which is often full of stories of how unjust the criminal justice system is when Chaz from Southend dodges a prison sentence after an episode of serial vandalism.
If Chaz's serial vandalism had been somehow politically motivated, it may of course be a different story. The problem with political sentencing (and that is exactly what it is - there's already enough empirical evidence to draw that conclusion from) is not that it is unfair, which it undoubtedly is, but that it is dangerous to the public who end up having more violent criminals left on the streets because the places where they should be are full of anti-austerity demonstrators busy reading left wing literature.
Then of course, there was today. An overwhelming wave of stupidity seems to have rippled throughout middle-England, urging thousands of people to log on to the Government's new e-petitions system to demand the re-introduction of the death penalty. Of course, this demand could be helpful if they're willing to follow through the whole eye-for-an-eye punishment thing - Jonnie Marbles pied by Rupert Murdoch would make incredible TV. Rupert Murdoch and the Clown Prosecution Service. It could be an instant hit on Sky 1. Unfortunately, I suspect that the thousands of deranged lunatics who were presumably drawn to their computers this morning by an impending full moon are far too devoid of rational thinking to follow that logic.
I mean, apart from the fact that it is fundamentally inhumane for a state to murder it's citizens, the death penalty doesn't really work as a deterrent or a punishment. Murder rates are no lower in countries that retain capital punishment, and it's hard to feel remorseful when you're dead. Unless you come back as a zombie and join the hordes of other Zombies baying for more blood - but that's hardly remorseful.
