Three Sentences (Semi-Political)

[neonlyte]

A UK court today revoked Restriction Orders on six men suspected of being involved in terrorism citing the RO broke Human Rights Conventions. The RO imposed an 18 hour home curfew, and monitored phonecalls, mail, visitors and internet access. In this case, insufficient evidence existed to bring the men to trial.

A UK court today doubled the sentence on a hit-and-run driver who killed a man - from eighteen months to three years.

A UK court today sentenced a woman teacher aged 49 to four years and three months imprisonment for having sex with a male pupil aged 14. The 'couple' were spotted having sex on the upper deck of a car park by a crane driver. The woman was on her lunch break as a Jury in a trial at a nearby court.

I'm not sure I will ever understand the workings of the law.

 

[Liar]

Can't say much about either case... and I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to imply. Was one sentence too low or high in your opinion, compared to the other?

 

[oggbashan]

There is considerable debate in the UK at the moment about the length of sentences for various offences.

The subject is so complex that even some judges are complaining that they don't understand the system.

The public expect that someone sentenced to 12 years in jail will be there for 12 years. That is very unlikely. If the accused pleaded guilty then there will be an automatic deduction of one-third for the guilty plea so 12 years = 8. The prisoner will be eligible to be considered for parole after one third of the sentence, so 8 years = a possible minimum of less than 3. Time in prison on remand before trial is counted towards the sentence so if the case has taken a year to come to court, the convicted prisoner could be out on the street in less than a year - for a 12 year sentence.

The guidelines for sentencing are issued by an independent board and judges are expected to follow them unless there are aggravating or mitigating circumstances. If the tariff is 3 years, then a guilty plea will mean 2 years and parole will be considered after 8 months. Again, time on remand counts, so a two year sentence might mean the prisoner walks free from the dock.

There needs to be clarity about what a sentence of imprisonment means. The criminals understand the system. The public, and the politicians, don't.

Og

 

[Selena_Kitt]

The criminals understand the system. The public, and the politicians, don't.

uh yeah.
cuz the criminals have to live, work and use the system.

thanks for the post, Og... made Neo's sentences make more sense to me, anyway

 

[BlackShanglan]

Hmmm. Those cases, as presented, also have some differences in intent and proof as well as the crime (if any).

#1 would be a deliberate and severe crime, but there isn't enough proof to show that it's been committed. I suspect that the decision was based on that - that one cannot enact a supervision order that is itself essentially a punishment if no crime has been proven. I believe that bail conditions in the US theoretically work the same way, at least in some states - they can restrict movement to guarantee appearance at court, but at least in theory they should not enact a punishment because the person being bailed has only been accused, not convicted.

#2 is a severe crime, but one assumes - barring further information - that only part of it was deliberate. We know that the driver left the scene of an accident, which is a deliberate crime, but at the moment I am assuming that the the death itself was accidental. It's not clear if there were other aggravating factors - the driver was drunk, speeding, had a string of prior convictions, etc. - but I'd have to say that even if it was my own relative, I'd think three years enough and possibly even too much if the only crime was leaving the scene.

#3 may be seen by some as a less severe crime, I would guess more so in the UK where the age of consent is 16. Where I live at the moment, the age of consent is 18. Many people also perceive males as less victimized than females when they have underage sex. However, the teacher's position over the pupil gave her an unusual level of power in his life, and her actions were both deliberate and, in my opinion, grossly wrong as well as clearly illegal. She has a responsibility not only as an ordinary human but as the boy's teacher, and she violated that trust in a selfish way that has the potential to affect the boy's perceptions for a good deal of the rest of his life. I think the sentence fair.

Shanglan

 

[neonlyte]

Can't say much about either case... and I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to imply. Was one sentence too low or high in your opinion, compared to the other?

Sorry, been out much of the day. EDIT: Apology to Selena too.

I heard each of these sentences on the midday news - looked them up on the BBC news site.

In the case of the Restriction Orders, it appears to be a simple battle between judges, one judge grants an order, another repeals it. Either the legislation is faulty or the judges are standing on personal principle. I believe RO's last for six months while the police, and others, pursue enquiries. Better than holding suspects without trial, IMO.

The hit-and-run case (and others like it in the UK) baffle me. Accidents happen, people get killed. In the UK causing death by driving is a low ranked offence if there are no other mitigating circumstances, drink, dangerous driving etc. A hit-and-run strikes me as a more serious offence. Driving off means the driver has no knowledge of the extent of the injury, doesn't know if help has been summoned. Altogether a cowardly act. The initial sentence of eighteen months sounds to me to be ludicrously low not so much because of the accident but for driving away and leaving fate to play a hand. The court doubled the sentence.

In the third case, the kid involved had unspecified psychological problems. The woman, from what I can gather was a kind of personal tutor. All the reporting focuses on how she had sex with him during her lunch break from serving Jury duty. I absolutely agree it is wrong for a teacher to have sex with a pupil, particularly one with problems, but I somehow sense she was being punished also for shaming the court. (She was actually arrested in the court room and taken from the Jury)

I have trouble, despite the clear wrong doing of the teacher equating her four and a quarter year sentence with the hit-and-run drivers initial eighteen month sentence.

As Og says, sentencing in the UK is a complete mess.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Such interesting thoughts, Neon. It's intriguing to me how differently we see them.

The hit-and-run case (and others like it in the UK) baffle me. Accidents happen, people get killed. In the UK causing death by driving is a low ranked offence if there are no other mitigating circumstances, drink, dangerous driving etc. A hit-and-run strikes me as a more serious offence. Driving off means the driver has no knowledge of the extent of the injury, doesn't know if help has been summoned. Altogether a cowardly act. The initial sentence of eighteen months sounds to me to be ludicrously low not so much because of the accident but for driving away and leaving fate to play a hand. The court doubled the sentence.

I suppose that my feelings here are very much rooted in my own nature. I can imagine someone driving off because he or she was a callous coward, of course, but I suppose I end up imagining that perhaps the person was just so horrified at what had happened that he was stunned and fled in a desire for it simply not to have happened. Of course, that's colored by my later knowledge; I know from the news story that the person was dead, and the driver could not have known that. Hmmm. Perhaps you're right. I know it's odd, but I hadn't thought about it in that light. Driving off knowing someone is dead is somehow a good deal less horrible to me than hitting someone and leaving him or her with no idea how bad it is.

In the third case, the kid involved had unspecified psychological problems. The woman, from what I can gather was a kind of personal tutor.

Ugh. To me, this makes it worse still. I would hardly think her sentence enough, now, if she is willing to simply use a troubled adolescent whom she was supposed to have been helping, and in a way that will undoubtedly exacerbate the problems he already had. She knew of two seperate factors (his age and his psychological problems) mitigating his judgement and undoubtedly knew the law, and she decided to anyway. Although you've won me over to a less sympathetic feeling toward the driver, he can at least still plead panic and a God-awful shock swaying his decision; she had every chance to make the right choice and chose not to.

Shanglan

 

[Selena_Kitt]

my three year old sister was killed crossing the street between two parked cars... it was an elderly man that hit her coming down a suburban side-street... he didn't run... and I don't believe he ever served any time or received any real punishment... but I know he was devastated for the rest of his days by what happened. I can't even imagine. I can understand the inclination to run... it's horrifying... and when you're in an accident, your mind does strange things.

I remember the first accident I was in, I was 16, just got my license, guy side-swiped me, I got out of the car and ran to the nearest payphone... not to call to police... but to call my mom panic can make you do strange, strange things...

 

[neonlyte]

Such interesting thoughts, Neon. It's intriguing to me how differently we see them.

Ugh. To me, this makes it worse still. I would hardly think her sentence enough, now, if she is willing to simply use a troubled adolescent whom she was supposed to have been helping, and in a way that will undoubtedly exacerbate the problems he already had. She knew of two seperate factors (his age and his psychological problems) mitigating his judgement and undoubtedly knew the law, and she decided to anyway. Although you've won me over to a less sympathetic feeling toward the driver, he can at least still plead panic and a God-awful shock swaying his decision; she had every chance to make the right choice and chose not to.

Shanglan

Oh I agree. There can be no mitigation for her action. My personal opinion is her sentence is too light, but then I hesitate trying to equate her sentence with the hit-and-run case. It is looking at the two together I find difficult to resolve. The court did not instruct for the woman to receive any counselling during sentence, presumably the judge thinks this was a one-off, though she repeated the offence with the lad eleven times. What bothered me most was the media emphasis placed upon her arrest whilst in court, I've seen no comment about the serious harm she did to this young lad, it would disturb me greatly if the judge also viewed her arrest in court 'an offence'.

 

[BlackShanglan]

my three year old sister was killed crossing the street between two parked cars... it was an elderly man that hit her coming down a suburban side-street... he didn't run... and I don't believe he ever served any time or received any real punishment... but I know he was devastated for the rest of his days by what happened. I can't even imagine. I can understand the inclination to run... it's horrifying... and when you're in an accident, your mind does strange things.

I remember the first accident I was in, I was 16, just got my license, guy side-swiped me, I got out of the car and ran to the nearest payphone... not to call to police... but to call my mom panic can make you do strange, strange things...

Yes, panic and shock do act very oddly. I was recently reviewing a critical thinking exercise that involved working out what to do after a plane crash in the Alaskan wilderness. The chief focus was survival (choosing objects out of the wreckage and prioritizing them), but what intrigued me was the perspective of the Army survival specialist they had giving input on the scenario. I suppose that I had a (ridiculously unfair) image in my mind of a sort of rough, burly, macho person who would be demand swift and decisive physical action and no whinging or pandering to emotion, but actually the first thing he addressed, and one he identified as both one of the greatest threats and the most underestimated, was the psychological and physical effects of the shock. His advice was to first get everyone to sit down and minimize movement and action while recovering from the trauma. He felt that their initial actions would be poorly chosen, poorly carried-out, and potentially dangerous as well as wasteful of energy and body heat, and that taking immediate action had a much higher likelihood of leading to panic and disintegration of the group. It was a fascinating thing to learn; some of the biggest threats he perceived in the situation were from human behavior and reactions, not from the physical surroundings.

Shanglan

 

[neonlyte]

Selena, that's a sad loss and it sounds as if it was an unfortunate accident.

Panic can cause the most extraordinary behaviour. The driver in this hit-and-run case hit a woman crossing the road on a light controlled pedestrian crossing. It was an accident, but it sounds like an accident that should never have happened. He was driving without insurance and didn't report to the police until seven days after the accident. I'm tempted to believe he panicked both for striking the woman and breaking the law - driving through red light and no insurance. He is also of Indian descent, one wonders, given the hostile attitude in UK toward foreigners at the time (this happened not long after the tube bombings) whether that played on his mind.

 

[BlackShanglan]

That he did eventually report to the police would weigh strongly in my perception of the case. That would make me lean toward thinking that he had panicked and was genuinely remorseful. Of course, one never knows the details, but if he turned himself in without already being under close suspicion, I think it a sign of some decency in him.

Shanglan