Youth Sentences a joke

2 youths were given 100 hours community punishment for stamping a baby deer to death in a Dorset park. They were not named and shamed for legal reasons.
This sentence was given in a youth court by a judge who couldn't hand down a custodial sentence for the offence. One of the youths is already appealing his sentence.

Facebook scandal

A defence Barrister has been slated for using Facebook pictures of a rape victim to illustrate her "having a good time" after she was attacked!
All right, I know anyone accused of a crime is entitled to the best defence money can buy, but this takes us back to the days of defences like "She was asking for it!" "She shouldn't be dressed so provocatively!" and (Heaven forbid) " The 'victim' has a background of enjoying sexual relations with more than one partner"
Congratulations Colin McCarraher - You have put the legal system back more than 2 decades!

Reductions in sentencing

Anybody else perplexed by the numbers of appeals for reduction of sentences being won by younger people who have been sentenced for murder or manslaughter recently?
I notice that the Killers of Sophie Lancaster are appealing their sentences, hopefully they won't be successful.

Adopt a Neighbour

Too often these days stories are to be found in local papers about bodies being found weeks, months and in some cases years, before they are discovered. When this happens, local people are quick enough to slate the local authority and social services. Surely, we are all to blame equally?
Years ago, when the milk was left on the step of a neighbour or the newspaper or mail were sticking out of a letterbox the community rallied and notified the correct authorities that there may be a problem.
This was community spirit, not surveillance or interference.
*Find a neighbour, exchange phone numbers, tell them if you are going away!
*Look out for more vulnerable neighbours - if you are concerned about them talk to your local Police Community Support Officer, they can pop round and check if a person is all right.
This is another role Community Champions could take on, they could be a point of liaison between the authorities and the community.

Read it and weep - for 17 year old Shaun Dykes

In Derby, 2:30 on Saturday afternoon a young man called Shaun Dykes was so distressed that he climbed up on the roof of a shopping centre and contemplated taking his own life. A crowd of people gathered to watch as Police Officers tried to coax him down. A minority of the people gathered (according to the Police and other witnesses) to watch this desperate young man started shouting, encouraging Shaun to jump.
At 5:30pm Sean jumped.

My thoughts are with Shaun's family at this time, may he rest in peace.

Is this....................

Is this..................11 year old girl excluded from primary school for swigging vodka............. Enough to make the angels weep?

Youth Sentencing - a new study

In a report issued to the press by Barnardo's it is stated that the number of children who are locked up by courts has risen by 550% between 1996 - 2006. It also claims that only 7% of the offences that led to youth custody last year were serious enough to warrant a custodial sentence.
Barnardo's has called for more early intervention with families to stop custodial sentencing for all but the most serious of crimes - but this has been happening with a huge amount of training and funding around restorative justice and holistic early interventions being put in place.
The disparity seems to be that there are no "set in stone" tariffs for certain offences, OK, punitive justice is never a good thing, but it seems wholly unfair, whatever the age of the offender that some people receive a custodial sentence for the same offence another offender receives a caution for. Until this is addressed, we cannot have a fair system in place, we here about a postcode lottery for the NHS, but not about postcode lotteries for sentencing, yet it happens.

A reminder of CABOT Resources

Cabot resources
http://communityagainstknifecrime.blogspot.com/
http://enoughtomaketheangelsweep.blogspot.com/
http://cabot-bristol.spaces.live.com
http://office.cabot.googlepages.com
http://asbfeedback.freeforums.org

Epetition against knife crime, please sign

COMMUNITIES AGAINST KNIFE CRIME PETITION
Our Epetition has just been excepted by the Prime Ministers office..... It reads as follows

"Where communities are strong and cohesive, crime and fear of crime is lessened. More needs to be done to address the underling causes of knife crime and boost communities. This could be achieved by the setting up of local community champions within the existing framework of local participation. Working alongside judicial reform which makes carrying concealed weapons an offence which carries a mandatory prison sentence would go a long way to promoting public confidence."
If you wish to sign the petition, the link is here.

Thank you
Ali

Pilot scheme in Scotland for panic rooms

Glasgow are piloting a scheme to install up to 10 panic rooms in the homes of domestic abuse victims to enable them to stay in their own home. The cost of this is some £6,000 cheaper than a temporary accommodation alternative. The full story from today's record can be found here.

Security in mental health units

Many of the papers today are running stories of prisoners in the mental health system being able to escape from low secure units to re-offend in the community.
I wonder how many people know that the cheapest drugs available are prescribed to patients in hospitals, because of serious underfunding. Perhaps if the right medication was found to suit each patient, regardless of cost - then with proper care and management tragedies and incidents like the papers have reported would be lessened.

Cornish curfew a success

A trial curfew in a Cornish village has been hailed a success by Police Officers in Redruth.
The curfew meant that Youths could not be on the streets after 9pm unless accompanied by an adult. The amount of antisocial behaviour reported during this period decreased, although this has not been officially verified.
The trial was a voluntary agreement with the local community.

Sorry.........

....... For the overt indulgence of the last post, but I think modern day politicians and statesmen could learn lots by reading Marcus Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus 121-180 (Quotes)

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus 121-180



A man should be upright, not be kept upright.
A man's worth is no greater than his ambitions.
A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live.
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.
Anger cannot be dishonest.
Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.
Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.
As the same fire assumes different shapes When it consumes objects differing in shape, So does the one Self take the shape Of every creature in whom he is present.
Be content to seem what you really are.
Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.
Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.
Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.
Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.
Confine yourself to the present.
Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.
Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.
Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.
Do every act of your life as if it were your last.
Each day provides its own gifts.
Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.
Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.
Everything that happens, happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.
He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.
Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ''This is a misfortune'' but ''To bear this worthily is good fortune.''
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks.
I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.
It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.
Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.
Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.
Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.
Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.
Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
Men exist for the sake of one another.
Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.
Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.
Poverty is the mother of crime.
Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.
Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.
The act of dying is one of the acts of life.
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.
The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.
The secret of all victory lies in the organization of the non-obvious.
The sexual embrace can only be compared with music and with prayer.
The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.
The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.
There is nothing happens to any person but what was in his power to go through with.
Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.
To live happily is an inward power of the soul.
To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.
Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.
We are too much accustomed to attribute to a single cause that which is the product of several, and the majority of our controversies come from that.
We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.
Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.
When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man's life.
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
Where a man can live, he can also live well.
You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.
Your life is what your thoughts make it.

Intolerance

A group of Goths camping at a park in Leeds, last week were set upon by a group and kicked and punched. One man had his ear cut off, and others had broken noses and ribs. Didn't the death of Sophie Lancaster teach people anything about intolerance?

SHOCK HEADLINE "Credit crunch could increase crime"

Home Office Minister Tony McNulty admitted after a letter from Jacqui Smith to Gordon Brown was leaked, crime rates, extremism and illegal immigration could increase with the credit crunch - well, excellent news here then! - Just think if some of the billions spent on the war with Iraq had been put into street policing and building newer and better prisons, perhaps offenders would actually be procecuted for committing crime!
Sorry, I am a little sarcastic today :-)

Mexico takes a stand on crime, with mass anti-crime rallies

Hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens took a stand on crime by attending mass demonstrations on crime, in a series of protests, dressed in white and silently carrying a candle, they protested to put pressure on the Government to take a tougher stance on crime. The full BBC stor can be found here, complete with a video.

What is Britishness?

I think 'Britishness' is quite easy to define - it is the sense of community in the face of adversity the country used to display.
Britishness is knocking on a neighbours door if they haven't taken the paper in for a couple of days. It is helping others out if they have a crisis, it is volunteering for a good cause. It is teaching your children respect for others person and property. It is keeping a public stiff upper lip and not going on Jeremy Kyle and washing your dirty laundry in public, it is caring if people are abusing children, animals and vulnerable people. It is stopping to help push a car, or offering a neighbour a lift home at the bus stop when they have been shopping.
It has nothing to do with colour or creed, class or education. We were a great nation because that community spirit once existed.

Society

Much is being made of the global recession and credit crunch, as it is financially affecting most families in the UK, with fuel, food and other goods being more expensive, topped by the rise in utility bills. It is more difficult to get a mortgage or loan at the present time.
In the last decade or so, credit has been so easily obtainable that the culture of saving up for luxury items has become almost non existent. Nothing really, has a value any more - if it can be replaced straight away, then it doesn't matter if it is not treated with respect.
This can sadly also be attributed to other values. Our society has become morally bankrupt. Respect used to exist within families and within the system - respect for parents, authority figures and for peers. This has almost been eradicated. The family unit is no longer strong, with both parents being forced to work, there are no role models at home, which in the first few years helps build character in a child which should reinforce them throughout their life. Even single parents have felt forced by the Government to go back to the workplace. Both parents and schools have been forced to look at how to discipline children, and to be honest - nothing seems to work (the threat of a smack was enough a couple of generations ago, but this is no longer admissible).

And this week.................

A man was kicked and punched by 3 "men" after he refused a request to give one of them a cigarette. The full story can be found here. He is now in a drug induced coma in intensive care.
Reminiscent of a case in Bristol where a man died after a man jumped out of a car and punched him in the head and he fell.
Well, this is a week the UK can again be proud of, isn't it?
If you look at both links and have any information, ring Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.