The honour of being governed by the likes of these
Thank heaven, writes Dalrymple, for our enlightened Western leaders, with their
profound — and profoundly humane — views
on the matter of, for instance, criminal justice.
They see things all so clearly.
Finding himself in the West Country, Dalrymple picks up a local paper, the Western Daily Press, and lights on the following report:
A Chard [near Yeovil] teenager has been jailed for his part in what a judge called ‘an horrendous attack’ on a vulnerable and defenceless man with autism. Daniel Rodrigues, 18, of Beckington Crescent, and two co-defendants subjected their victim to a ‘brutal’ attack after a bout of heavy drinking. A police officer who attended the blood-spattered scene in a flat said it was ‘like something out of a horror movie’, Taunton Crown Court was told. All three attackers had blood on them and at one time they were all hitting their 20-year-old victim, Robert Macdonald, at the same time.
Macdonald was struck over the head a number of times with an iron bar and was taken to hospital with multiple cuts to his forehead, face and scalp, said Fiona Elder, prosecuting. Forensic scientists found he had been hit while already bleeding. He needed surgery with a general anaesthetic and a blood transfusion. In a victim impact statement, he said the vision in one eye was affected, he had scars to his face and head and had to move away from Taunton because he felt so scared.
Rodrigues, the paper reports,
was jailed for 15 months for inflicting grievous bodily harm.
Dalrymple explains that in other words, Rodrigues will serve
at most 7½ months in prison (remission of 50% is an inalienable right) and quite possibly fewer, if he is granted early release.
Dalrymple asks:
If he gets 7½ months for a crime like his, which sentence must lesser criminals, such as mere burglars, get?
Punishment, he says,
must be proportionate to the seriousness of the offence; and surely anyone can see that to send a burglar to prison for (say) six weeks is utterly futile. It follows from this that to send Rodrigues to prison is itself totally pointless; Rodrigues ought to be released at once, to prevent the terrible absurdity, the mockery, of it all.
Primitive punishment impulse is overcome
Thank heaven, writes Dalrymple, that
we have a justice secretary who sees this all clearly. Really it is an honour for a population to be ruled by people of so deep an insight, so sincere a compassion and so uncompromising a realism. We may be proud of our state that it has at last overcome the primitive impulse to punish, incarcerate and incapacitate young men like Rodrigues, who so badly need help. Pity about Robert Macdonald, the victim of the attack, but the question we must surely all ask ourselves is, Did he have a triple lock on his front door? And if not, why not?
