On Dec 29, 12:55*am, MB wrote:
On 28/12/2011 17:01, furnessvale wrote:





On Dec 28, 4:36 pm, Bevan *wrote:

I would suggest that the law needs to be changed so that cable thieves
can be charged with "sabotage& *endangering safety of rail passe ngers",
rather than theft, with severe minimum penalties specified by law, such
that some namby-pamby do-gooder could not reduce to a token level of
sentence. Dodgy scrap dealers should also face similarly severe charges
& *penalties.

Bevan

No need for that. *Theft carries a maximum penalty of 7 years,
handling even more. *When did you see anyone, let alone these scroats,
get anywhere near these sorts of tariff.

As another poster said, the real beef is with the guidlines and the
dickhead who makes them.

George

I would like to see more creative use of charging like happens in the
USA. *If there are a series of thefts then charge them with them all and
give them consecutive sentences. *Add trespassing on railway property,
endangering passengers and not having a dog licence each with
consecutive sentences. *In the UK they seem to chose one specimen charge
often not the most serious one then of course seven years means they
will only serve about three years. *The newspapers play along with the
legal system with headlines like "metal thieves get twenty years" which
when you read them actually mean perhaps five people got sentences of up
to five years so will serve two years.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Defending solicitors may advise their clients to ask for offences to
be taken into consideration, reminding them that there are thresholds
at which higher sentences result. Often the offences to be taken into
consideration fall just short of the nest sentencing threshold - odd
that.



Re Consecutive and concurrent sentences:

"In the case of R v O'Brien and others [2006] EWCA Crim 1741,
(followed in R v O'Halloran [2006] EWCA 3148) the Court of Appeal
considered whether one sentence of imprisonment for public protection
could be ordered to run consecutively to another sentence of
imprisonment for public protection. The Court determined that while
not unlawful, it is undesirable to impose consecutive indeterminate
sentences or an indeterminate sentence consecutive to another period
of imprisonment".

More on http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/s...offenders/#a18

Patrick

On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 04:03:45 -0800 (PST), D1039
wrote:

On Dec 29, 12:55*am, MB wrote:
On 28/12/2011 17:01, furnessvale wrote:


On Dec 28, 4:36 pm, Bevan *wrote:

I would suggest that the law needs to be changed so that cable thieves
can be charged with "sabotage& *endangering safety of rail passe ngers",
rather than theft, with severe minimum penalties specified by law, such
that some namby-pamby do-gooder could not reduce to a token level of
sentence. Dodgy scrap dealers should also face similarly severe charges
& *penalties.

Bevan

No need for that. *Theft carries a maximum penalty of 7 years,
handling even more. *When did you see anyone, let alone these scroats,
get anywhere near these sorts of tariff.

As another poster said, the real beef is with the guidlines and the
dickhead who makes them.

George

I would like to see more creative use of charging like happens in the
USA. *If there are a series of thefts then charge them with them all and
give them consecutive sentences. *Add trespassing on railway property,
endangering passengers and not having a dog licence each with
consecutive sentences. *In the UK they seem to chose one specimen charge
often not the most serious one then of course seven years means they
will only serve about three years. *The newspapers play along with the
legal system with headlines like "metal thieves get twenty years" which
when you read them actually mean perhaps five people got sentences of up
to five years so will serve two years.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Defending solicitors may advise their clients to ask for offences to
be taken into consideration, reminding them that there are thresholds
at which higher sentences result. Often the offences to be taken into
consideration fall just short of the nest sentencing threshold - odd
that.



Re Consecutive and concurrent sentences:

"In the case of R v O'Brien and others [2006] EWCA Crim 1741,
(followed in R v O'Halloran [2006] EWCA 3148) the Court of Appeal
considered whether one sentence of imprisonment for public protection
could be ordered to run consecutively to another sentence of
imprisonment for public protection. The Court determined that while
not unlawful, it is undesirable to impose consecutive indeterminate
sentences or an indeterminate sentence consecutive to another period
of imprisonment".

More on http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/s_to_u/s...offenders/#a18

That appears to be addressing indeterminate sentences which are made
doubly-indeterminate (IYSWIM) by adding them to one end or the other
of another sentence rather than run-of-the-mill sentencing for
multiple "ordinary" offences. There would seem to be a significant
degree of nonsense in doing so but the judgment maybe allows for rarer
circumstances when it would be appropriate.

On Dec 28, 5:01*pm, furnessvale wrote:
When did you see anyone, let alone these scroats,
get anywhere near these sorts of tariff.

I don't have access to a complete set of sentencing outcomes. And
nor, I suspect, do you. The Daily Mail doesn't report all trials, you
know,

ian

On Dec 29, 8:38*pm, ian batten wrote:
On Dec 28, 5:01*pm, furnessvale wrote:

When did you see anyone, let alone these scroats,
get anywhere near these sorts of tariff.

I don't have access to a complete set of sentencing outcomes. *And
nor, I suspect, do you. *The Daily Mail doesn't report all trials, you
know,

ian

I have never read the daily wail in my life but I did serve as a
police officer for more than 20 years. I never saw anyone get the
maximum for any offence (mandatory life for murder excepted). Some of
the offences I dealt with were truly horrific and I often wondered
just what a villain had to do to get the maximum. Then of course
remission, release on licence etc kicks in to reduce things even more.

George

On 30/12/2011 19:01, furnessvale wrote:
On Dec 29, 8:38 pm, ian wrote:
On Dec 28, 5:01 pm, wrote:

When did you see anyone, let alone these scroats,
get anywhere near these sorts of tariff.

I don't have access to a complete set of sentencing outcomes. And
nor, I suspect, do you. The Daily Mail doesn't report all trials, you
know,

ian

I have never read the daily wail in my life but I did serve as a
police officer for more than 20 years. I never saw anyone get the
maximum for any offence (mandatory life for murder excepted). Some of
the offences I dealt with were truly horrific and I often wondered
just what a villain had to do to get the maximum. Then of course
remission, release on licence etc kicks in to reduce things even more.

George


A few years I read a report in an American newspaper of a very case
where a woman was abducted from her house at gunpoint, taken out of the
town into the woods where she was stripped and repeatedly raped and
abused. She tried to run away and was shot at. She thought she had
been hit and lost consciousness but when came around found that she had
not been hit. She managed to find a road and flag down a truck that
took her to the police.

The attacker was charged with a long list of offences, found guilt of
them all and given long sentences for each one to be served consecutively.

The local reporter was unsure of the total sentence so rang the judge
who was also unsure and had to get out a piece of paper to total them
all up! I think it was about 70+ years so the offender would be about
100 before he would be able to ask for release.

When I read this I wondered about what would happen in the UK. There
would be one charge and quite possibly not the most serious one. He
might get "life" but there seemed a good chance he would be out in 10 to
15 years.

furnessvale wrote:
I have never read the daily wail in my life but I did serve as a
police officer for more than 20 years. I never saw anyone get the
maximum for any offence (mandatory life for murder excepted). Some
of
the offences I dealt with were truly horrific and I often wondered
just what a villain had to do to get the maximum. Then of course
remission, release on licence etc kicks in to reduce things even
more.


Is there any conclusive evidence that longer sentences result in a
lower crime rate? Countries in mainland Europe that have low crime
rates seem to have much shorter prison sentences than the UK and a
greater reliance on community sentences.

On the other hand, the USA seems to lock people up for much longer,
with a crime rate that - gun crime apart - is much lower than the
UK's. That would seem to support your view, but whether we could
afford the considerably higher cost of prisons is moot.

"SB" wrote in message

http://www.bbc.co.uk/search/news/?q=metal%20thefts

====

Scrap metal raids: Police seize tonnes of rail cable

There's even a new Matt cartoon on the subject:
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/02097/matt-030112-email_2097922a.jpg