Or more likely, problem not solved.
We could have 60% of London’s police from the BAME community, and a minimum of 8 years prison for carrying a knife, rising to 15 years for using one in an attack or robbery, but how do you get judges to impose those sentences?
I don’t have a suggestion for solving the knife and gun crime problem, but it’s as sure as God made little green apples, that it will take more than an act of Parliament to get the judiciary to impose sentences that are a positive deterrent, and if by some miracle they did impose them, you would then have to deal with the Parole Board, a public body sponsored by the Department of Justice.
A guy, (I won’t name him, but you can Google it), was given a life sentence in 2013 for raping a 66 y.o. woman in East London, then locking her in a cupboard.
In April this year, after serving 8.5 years the Parole Board held a telephone meeting to decide on his parole, it was decided that he was “suitable” for release.
The raped woman died in 2002, but her son who was entitled to submit a statement at the Parole hearing was never contacted, until a journalist rang him to tell him of the Board’s decision.
