Up to 12,000 of Britain’s most prolific shoplifters will avoid jail under Labour laws scrapping most prison sentences of under one year.
Judges and magistrates should only impose jail sentences of less than one year in “exceptional circumstances” as part of the Sentencing Act passed last year.
Ministry of Justice data show that 98 per cent of shoplifters currently in jail would qualify for alternative “community punishments” under the new law, which took effect last month.
Yes, this does mean that disincentives also matter.
The base idea of having government is that we gain public goods from government. Defence of the real magainst the Frenchies, public order through a criminal law system and so on. These are the prime duties, the purpose, of the system.
So, we’ve not an RN any more, we’ve not public order as we’ve not a criminal law system worthy of the name – why in buggery do we bother feeding all the lanyards therefore?
Amputation of fingers for repeat shoplifters could be cheap and effective…
I’d start with the stocks and pillories and keep amputation for repeat offenders. As a society we need to relearn the lessons of public shame so perhaps the parents of young offenders should join them.
Bring back the lash??
Or the Birch…….
As I’ve mentioned on here before, my grandfather said his friends who received the birch never went back and he admitted it had a deterrent effect on him.
My late dad said exactly the same thing.
If the Met Police lose any more guns an enterprising shopkeeper may be able to offer a more permanent solution!
Most of their party seem to be criminals so they’re really just looking after themselves.
It mostly isn’t ‘shoplifting’ though is it…?
feral looting and rioting would be a better description for much of it.
What was that girl sentenced to during the “Call Me Dave” riots?
But calling these riots would be racist, obviously…
Under the new rulers hands will be chopped off. The black shoplifters rampaging through Clapham are going to be forcibly introduced to the new Top Trumps game. They’ve slipped down the order…
I expect it will depend on who they are stealing from.
Prison population in 1950 = 25,000.
Prison population in 2025 = 110,000 (predicted).
I might be wrong here, but since we have had unrelenting demands from those on the left to reduce / ease / eliminate punishments for law breaking, an influx of peoples for whom obeying the law appears to be voluntary and a Police service and Judiciary who have decided that some lawbreakers are treated more leniently to others breaking the same laws, perhaps doing the opposite to what has been done may make a bit of a difference?
It appears to have worked very well in El Salvador…….
Ummmm.. Obeying “the Law” is, and has always been, a matter of voluntary choice…
There’s literally *nothing* that makes you Obey the Law, other than Incentives. Like not getting your neck stretched, or…….
Quite….coercive… won’t you say ?
I’d suggest that the strongest incentive to Obey the Law would be that of having the requirement to behave in a decent and honest fashion drummed into you by your parents – hence the changing demographics of the prison community.
Re “incentives”, research has shown that “being caught” is a stronger disincentive than the severity of the punishment (with the possible exception of punishment of the “capital” variety) – i.e. a 5% chance of being nicked and getting a 10-year stretch is far less off-putting than a 90% chance of copping for a lagging (3 years). 🙂
I’d suggest it’s peer pressure, and the risks and serious drawbacks of being outcast from society. This is what works in Japan, and used to work here.
There’s also, ahem, God. In a secular society, to be punished you have first to be caught. An omniscient God sees all and is not resource-constrained, and you’ll get judged at the Pearly Gates no matter what. Not spending eternity in the hot place is quite an incentive for those who have developed a sense of future and deferred gratification.
The ideal result is a self-regulating society at no cost.
Japan also doesn’t subsidise single mothers much. Nearly all children are born in marriage and lack of fathers is about the biggest causes of crime.
Then you’d think S. America – where almost everyone is staunch Catholic – would be very law abiding. I can assure you…
Ah, there’s a difference in theory and practice though, isn’t there? Especially when you can buy Indulgences. They sabotage the whole structure.
“ where almost everyone is staunch Catholic”
The only South American countries with majority Catholic populations are Argentina and Colombia and most are not particularly staunch.
“I’d suggest it’s peer pressure, and the risks and serious drawbacks of being outcast from society. This is what works in Japan, and used to work here.”
But Japan has ONE SOCIETY. The USA and the UK each have several, and the risk of being outcast from the law-abiding one isn’t much of a threat to the lawbreakers.
The Japs are also acquiring Kurds, which ain’t great. The USA always had multiple societies but the UK only had one (well, an Englishman, Scotsman, Welshman and Northern Irishman went into a pub and discussed the class system) until it was decided we needed enriching, and lo, we were. Hence the precipitate plunge in our social cohesion and trust.
A noce theory, but believers often turn it on it head and say that God understands their lawbreaking as they have good reason.
But the expected outcomes are not equal: 5% x 10 years = expected 6 months in the pokey, while 90% x 3 years = expected 32 months.Even allowing for non-linear utility (and time value), that’s a good trade.
Which is why mandating stiffer sentences is not as effective as upping the conviction rate.
Yes, but…
You are also increasing the expected penalty – so we cannot separate the impact of higher certainty of apprehension from the greater deterent of a harsher penalty. I suspect that a 100% detection and conviction rate for a one-year term would be more effective than a 10% detection and conviction rate for a 10 year term – and that is the comparison we have to make.
Absolutely… I think we’re singing from the same hymnsheet. 🙂
I think there used to be an idea that the law was the same for everyone, that it was part of the foundation of our relatively comfortable society, and that the alternative led to anarchy.
Not for everyone obviously, there were always some who thought they could benefit by being illegal within a legal system. But that was a small minority and didn’t threaten the system.
Obviously that doesn’t apply any more, of course, particularly under Two-Tier. So yes, we’re just left with the threat of punishment, and even that is being seriously weakened.
I’m expecting things to get worse; not just more criminality by the Diversity and our own criminal scrotes, but a wider group of people deciding that there’s no point obeying the law any more.
You can include me in that. For me it started when I found myself in a position of continuing to be financially punctilious or going bust and entering a benefits trap. I decided that avoiding that trap would not only be better for me and my family but also on balance much cheaper for society, so that’s what I did.
This intensified with Covid, when I consciously and deliberately flouted behavioural rules that were evidently absurd or contradictory. For example I absolved myself from mask-wearing, as I was perfectly entitled to, for “reasons” that I was not obliged to give.
Now, I make strenuous efforts utterly to minimise my tax contributions. I see no reason to live in penury just for Rachel’s benefit.
Indeed…
“No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue”.
Lord Clyde – Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services v Inland Revenue [1929]
IMHO we’ve long since passed the point where the law has become increasing onerous on the law-abiding and increasing ineffective upon the scrotes of this country.
You think that the only reason that I am not a criminal is because I don’t like the legal consequences of being one? I find that pretty insulting to be honest.
It appears to have worked very well in El Salvador…….
Funnily enough it appears to be popular amongst those who had to try and survive amidst all the gang violence. Whilst the ones against are middle class westerners who didn’t have the experience.
It all comes down to a system that is a cost effective enough to be used as a deterrent. El Salvador have done this rather well.
Another example was turning the New York Subway system in the 1990’s from a crime riddled cess pit back into a transport system. It was observed that the criminals never paid fares and due to the lack of consequence neither did many others.
The solution was a zero tolerance policy where anyone crossing the barrier without a ticket was arrested on the spot and chained in a line with other offenders. Later in the day the entire chain gang would be marched out of the subway station to a bus outside that had been fitted out as a mobile police station for processing the “perps”. It was very efficient as a very few police officers could deal with lots of perpetrators without having to ship them individually to the local precinct. The line of people chained up being processed was a great deterrent to others and the perception of being watched made the subway feel safer. Other minor issues like graffiti were similarly discouraged. Very quickly crime and antisocial behavior largely melted away and it didn’t cost a lot.
Andyf, The “broken windows” theory, basically. Which more or less worked. Clean up the small stuff and you deter the big stuff.
I smoke. If I can find a bin or an ashtray, the butt goes there. If not, it gets stripped of tobacco and goes in my back pocket. But if you’re in a spot that has butts all over the place, it’s very easy to say “what the hell” and not bother. Keep it clean in the first place, I’m way less likely to be antisocial.
Less likely, but not certain. We maintain a ‘litter patrol’ along our country lane, but nearly every day some scrote tosses an empty burger box or milk shake into the hedge. I (seriously) blame the parents, or lack thereof.
It’s the unlikeliness of being caught. Within their society the Japanese are extremely law-abiding and do not drop litter where they will be seen doing it. However, they’ll happily throw drinks cans out of car windows where they won’t be seen.
Despite being an agnostic I’m coming more and more to the view that good societal behaviour is largely based on having an implacable judge living rent-free in your head. That said, I don’t knowingly drop litter even when alone, so I dunno.
I live twelve miles from the nearest McDonald’s, and a mile from the nearest public road, but still their detritus ends up in the hedge.
But what about their “yuman rites”!!?? Couldn’t do that here!
andyf, Rudy Guiliani to thank for that. When I was working in Germany the guy who was tasked with assisting us with our training had completed his degree in Toronto and the first job he had was with the New York subway, just before Guiliani took over as Mayor. One of the first steps the Mayor took after his election was to erect fences around the marshalling yards and deploy armed guards and dogs, with the promise ‘we will shoot anyone who comes here illegally’. After the 6th person was shot the graffiti stopped……
Time to bring back the birch? No need for custodial sentences, if I nice birching will set you right. Can’t imagine the feral youths wanting a repeat of that one.
And if that doesn’t stop them, bring back the noose!!
Justice system will still come into play, but the soft on crime government will result in escalation of offenses. The government ruins the perps lives by raising the threshold for correction to when they commit felonies. Not only will you get vastly more petty crime, you will get vastly more felonious crime.
And make no mistake, a government with the mentality to excuse petty crime will excuse major crime.
Remember Iryna Zarutska.
This insanity has been tried in Portland and San Francisco. The cities are dying. London is not immune. This is the beginning of the end of London. An existential blunder.
“Remember Iryna Zarutska”
I hear that the mayor of Providence RI would rather we forgot about her.
I wonder at what point there will be a rise in self-help justice.
Also known as vigilantism, at least by the people whose jobs it nominally is to produce that justice.
We’ve already had the volunteer “Safeguard Force” in Bournemouth, after huge crowds of the Diversity having fights on the beach, and a spate of stabbing, sexual assault and suchlike.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/on-the-streets-with-bournemouth-safeguard-force-5Hjd95R_2/
Of course the Left, the coppers, the local council and the BBC all attacked this as ‘vigilantism’, and it was smeared as ‘far right’.
Mobs of youths have run riot this week in London, invading shops in Clapham as part of a so-called “link-up” planned on social media
>import negroes
>be shocked – shocked, I tell you – at typical negro behaviour
Why do Londoners have difficulty understanding causality, is it because of their AIDS medication?
Labour laws scrapping most prison sentences of under one year.
Presumably the prison space is needed for really serious crimes like tweeting hurty words.
They’re expecting whitey social unrest as a consequence of their policies, and don’t want to have to eject existing prisoners first to clear space for their arrestees, as they had to after Axel Rutabaga. That the people they no longer jail mostly resemble those in Steve’s picture, or have big religious beards, or both, is an added bonus.
Yep and there’s a reason they’ve chosen 3 years as the cut off for jury trials, they’re scared of (more) jury nullification, that was the max sentence he was facing
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/02/07/former-royal-marine-cleared-of-race-hate-charge-over-southport-protest-video/
A cri de coeur from Mr W. Quite right too. What we want, for some meaning of “we”, is the Nightwatchman State. It does its handful of basic tasks and the population accordingly becomes so prosperous that it will willingly produce charitable handouts for the deserving poor.
Some hopes!
End of government efforts to control crime begets anarchy.
Store owners will restrict customer access, keep some goods in locked cabinets, even close stores. Walgreens has closed 12 stores in San Francisco. Some merchants will just shoot the bastards. Taking the law into their own hands is the only recourse.
Until one day Nunzio comes into the shop. He tells merchants that for a monthly fee, he can stop the shoplifting. Unlike Chicago a hundred years ago, protection rackets will lose the stigma.
What we have here is dekulakization in progress.
The biggest barrier to global communism is Western middle class prosperity. Ending crime control is a direct attack on middle class prosperity.
Woke government lets criminals off because they had no father, or someone was mean to their great, great grandfather (whom they have no clue as to who or where they were). This absurd compassion for the perpetrators and not the victims is destructive. Government compassion for perps is not their job. Government’s very existence is for the protection of victims.
Cental London will be a ghost town in 5 years.
Anarcho-tyranny. The government has backed away from its core responsibilities to defend the border and jail thieves and muggers. Instead of safeguarding the critical national energy infrastructure they’ve taxed and regulated it out of business, just as they’re cleverly taxing British white collar jobs out of the country to Calcutta. But they’re keen as mustard to keep the police, OfCom, and other still-functioning organs of the Cancerous State pointed like a weapon at, for the most part, white British people who say mean, hurty, truthful words on the Internet.
Sir Keir lied like a pro. We haven’t had free speech in Britain for a very long time. Until recently the creeping criminalisation of speech has been an effective tool of scaring the public into uneasy silence on certain important topics. They’ve since lost control of the narrative and the natives are restless, which explains the particular urgency this government and the last placed on trying to censor the Internet. But I don’t think the toothpaste will go back in the tube.
They can still send a squad of burly policemen to the airport to arrest a middle aged Irish comedy writer for disagreeing with trannies on Twitter. But this sort of thing no longer has a chilling effect on normies, it angers them instead. The lanyard class hasn’t learned the right lessons from COVID. (They’re not very bright.) On the Labour side, this manifests in hallucinations they can act like it’s 1998 again, despite resenting the knowledge that they are in power but have no mandate and everybody hates them. On the blue coloured side of the same establishment coin, the ever-helpful decorated election-loser Baroness Ruth Davidson (one of our for-some-reason National Treasure lesbians, like Sandi Toksvig) and a bunch of other highly credentialed Tory wets, Remainers and Amber Rudd recently launched Prosper UK. Ever drive through the countryside and see signs for a music festival of washed-up 80’s one hit wonder acts? They’ve got Chesney Hawkes, Toyah, AND Pete Burns’ keyboard player. It’s like that without the talent, audience, or nostalgic goodwill. The only way is up, baby, but not for the unloved David Cameron tribute act I think.
The old instruments of power, the lovingly “evidence based” Blairite fist of ban, regulate and vilify in the media are less powerful than they used to be in 1999. But MP’s still dream of turning the clock back to the days when nobody could call them cocknosed twats on social media. The cocknosed twats.
Sir Keir lied like a pro.
Is that ‘prostitute’ or ‘professional’ 🙂
It’s too late in the day. Normies used to watch TV and it was a few weirdos on the internet, but that’s switched over. The old media are still getting excited about things like Adolescence and how scary the internet is, but most people are there now, they know what it’s like.
But, but, but, aren’t shoplifters and other criminals living an alternative lifestyle and practicing an alternative economic system? Isn’t that to be encouraged in the name of diversity?
Kill a Frenchie – Win a Metro??
Now there’s a disincentive!
When your system of justice fails of its essential purpose, you must accomplish that purpose for yourself.
They do not get to “occupy the field” and then abandon the field, and then insist that you abandon it also.
Yes. That’s why I think some fine Sicilians will come in and take over the ‘police’ function. They have experience controlling the locals.
You will get a similar problem to what we have in US. You will pay for two police forces, government and private. Americans spend more on private security than for government security. That’s how much they suck.
We have a problem with schools. Government has completely fucked over the public school system, so people put their kids in private schools . . . while still paying for the POS government schools. Paying for two different systems.
Like paying for wind/solar power, but still having pay for the other stuff that actually works to keep on standby when the POS government sanctioned renewables fail.
Government is a complete failure. With torches and pitch forks, march around BBC Broadcasting House. Tens of thousands. Daily.
“We’re mad as hell, and we aren’t going to take it anymore.”
Because they have all the guns and since you don’t have any anymore they’re more than willing to use theirs against you.