Bag's Rants

Protection under the law for criminals. Even rich ones.

Reading this about the Lotto rapist and how we pay for his protection. I'm not sure what to say about this. My personal view is that he has served his sentence so he has 'paid for his crime'. Unfortunately, his payment was cheap. Sentences for this sort of crime are too short. Maybe if it had been a high profile case he would have got longer but it was not to be.

The story is about how much we are paying for his protection. Him being a millionaire means he is not short of a few bob. Our dilemma is we cannot have it both ways. If we can't protect him from being hunted down by reporters and exposed and while this is going on then the law needs to protect him. We also don't really want to pay for this. But what will we do if he decides he doesn't want to pay the police but instead set up a security force with all the ex-cons he knows and something happens.

My view is he should still be in jail. That way there would not be a problem. The law has released him and returned him to society having paid for his crime. He is now being hunted down by reporters and exposed putting him in danger. No different from Salman Rushdie, Mary Bell and the Bulger killers. He is being protected from illegal acts. That is what the police are paid for. And you can be sure he is paying more than most with the interest on £7M.

I don't see a review changing anything. The only thing that may happen is that they remove the protection from him as a response to the outcry. But is that really the answer to the problem?

posted by Bag @ 11:05 pm