gordondaviesmoustache
Well-Known Member
No, I think that's fair enough and not what I was referring to. Banning someone for life in those circumstances could readily be described as condign.I'm as liberal as they come. However repeat offenders of drink driving really fuckin grates on me. So i take it your not in favour of removing someone's licence permanatly, if they are caught 3. 4. 5 times?
I don't think sending someone to prison for an offence like that achieves anything, other than satisfying a retributive urge in others.
The technology is there to curtail people's freedoms in way that wasn't available (or conceived of) when the penal system we are broadly subject to today was first devised 150 or so years ago. Electronic tags and restrictive curfews, alongside onerous work in the community requirements are a much more effective and productive way of dealing with many crimes in my opinion. Cleary if people don't comply with those requirements then there has to be the ultimate sanction of imprisonment, but only as a last report. I say this, not because I'm an inveterate liberal (which I am) but because I don't believe prison works, in instances such as that.
As I've previously stated, if someone presents an everyday and present danger to the wider community by virtue of being at large, then they need to be removed from society, but I wouldn't classify Ray Wilkins as dangerous in that sense, even though I accept that driving a car whilst pissed is of itself dangerous. I'm talking about sexual predators and people with an extreme and well established history of violence.