AIBU to think that a mum of two should not be jailed for

[Mitmoo]

taking a pair of shorts that her friend stole in the riots.

She's got six months.

A young man who took £3.50 worth of water from a ransacked shop got six months.

I want justice, I want those who terrified my family even though we were fortunate enough to only view it through the television screen to be punished but I want some kind of proportionality.

Do we remove mum's from their children for six months because she took a pair of shorts from a friend who had been in the riots?

It was wrong of course, she should have shopped the "friend" but six months????

menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1455638_mum-jailed-for-six-months-for-wearing-pair-of-looted-shorts-

I would echo that soupdragon

As for that silly bolleux with the eviction this morning. The mother had bugger all to do with her sons activities. She'll just be rehoused because there is an 8yo daughter to consider. Another soundbite I'm afraid

ILL that was in response to the comment that she should have known that she was risking jail, but given that noone has been jailed before for handling a pair of shorts then sheh couldn't foresee the sentence. I am not saying send her home with a cup of tea, but if we are going to spend £20-£25 imprisoning her, then surely that money could be better spent making sure she is put to work in the community in orange suits, shoveling shit or similar as others have suggested.

Bang up the flatmat looter, no problem and I fully accept that handling stolen goods make you a part of the problem but this as others have said is becoming a witchhunt and not justice as we know it in Britain.

She didn't endanger anyone's life, anymore than someone speeding on an open road is endangering life (other than their own). But a conviction for theft/handling stolen goods in the mags court can get you six months, and that's what she got. Thoroughly deserved.

It's a ridiculous sentence for the sake of political posturing.

Where was all this 'coming down hard' during the MP's expenses scandal? That was THEFT too you know. Will this woman be let off her penalty if she says sorry and gives the shorts back?

What about the acts of criminal damage David, Boris et al were involved in during their Bullingdon club years? Oh, I forgot, they're posh, so that makes their actions 'youthful high-jinks' rather than criminal acts.

Of course criminal acts should be punished, but for God's sake lets get this in proportion. Cameron is turning a potential political disaster of his own making into a nice opportunity to enforce draconian measures of punishment and win round public opinion at the same time.

I bet he's rubbing his bloody hands together.

You know if you are living in HA/Council accomodation and you commit crime, that you are in danger of losing your home, quite rightly.

I do think that all of the services should be funded but where i live has improved greatly, thanks to two families being evicted. They have been evicted twice since then out of privately rented houses and have had to change their behaviour.

People can actually leave their windows open, in the heat, and park their cars outside their own homes. As well as not having to clean eggs off their windows, daily or have constant trouble in the night because of fighting, usually caused by one party owing the other party money for stolen goods that they have sold for them.

I don't think many on here realise how bad life can be on H.A estates. We all have the same social background and don't need this extra pressure that living amongst lawlessness brings.

"Women receive more custodial sentences compared to men for non violent crimes"

Stats? is that in total? proportionately for the amount of convictions?

YABU she may not have been the one who went in there smashing and robbing but she has taken goods she knew came from someone who had.

Handling stolen goods is a crime.

That she is a mother shows she has a lack of morals to pass down to her kids. And before you say about "poverty" I'm a single parent on a low wage and I've managed to clothe and feed my children without thieving or taking goods that have been nicked. There is no excuse.

No excuse.

YABU she may not have been the one who went in there smashing and robbing but she has taken goods she knew came from someone who had.

Handling stolen goods is a crime.

That she is a mother shows she has a lack of morals to pass down to her kids. And before you say about "poverty" I'm a single parent on a low wage and I've managed to clothe and feed my children without thieving or taking goods that have been nicked. There is no excuse.

No excuse.

When people who steal are given similarly harsh sentences, then it's fair.

However when even MP steal a hell of a lot more and get way with lighter sentences then it's not fair.

Can't be one rule for the poor and one for the rich

FFS I wrote a long and impassioned post and I got an 'oops' message from MN (never seen one of thems before!).

Ok.

I am fucking, absolutly, totally, furiously fuming about what the looters did to my city. I live in East London. I want them punished. I want them shown that they do NOT own these streets. The nasty, greedy little fuckers.

BUT I want justice. Not some showboating, career building version of justice that the government thinks will shut us up.

I want proper punishments that fit the crime. I want each case to be looked at properly and each person treated according to their crime.

To do otherwise is just pushing those who do feel totally disconnected from mainstream society further away.

How will that help stop this happening again?

If someone would normally get CS for handling a small amount of stolen goods then they should get a similar sentence. Dont hand down long prison terms in order to sate the crowd baying from behind their Daily Mails.

I want to see those 'big men' wearing pink jump suits and cleaning up the mess. I want to see them working for a bloody change. I want to see the people who think they have the right to free goods actually do something that brings out a sweat.

By all means put away the violent, the organisers, the thieves and those who caused destruction.

Dont treat me like an idiot and think handing out OTT sentences will make me think the government are doing a good job and everything will be fine now.

What about this evicting council tenants and stopping benefits? Talk about playing into the mindset that all the looters were on benefits and living in 'free' housing! Does this mean those who own houses and work will get away without sanction?

I am interested to see how the little rich girl will fare considering she will have access to a bit more than an overworked, harried, state appointed lawyer.

And no one has addressed the original pack of lies that started this. The police lied. Again. The IPCC has come out this morning and admitted it mislead journalists into believing Duggan fired the first shot, knowing he was unarmed.

I'm just so peed off with everyone in authority at the moment. I trust no one.

Heck! I'm becoming an anarchist!

Dont treat me like an idiot and think handing out OTT sentences will make me think the government are doing a good job and everything will be fine now.

Amen

As another poster indicated, it is very easy for posters who live in nice areas without having to live next door to these vermin to say, well go easy on them, be more understanding. It is classic ivory tower stuff and it is infuriating. I lived in a very deprived area for more than three years. The vast majority of people on the estate were nice and friendly. A few, however, 10 per cent maybe, made the lives of others a total misery. As far as I'm concerned, no punishment was too harsh for them.

If there were a clapping emoticon, I would be giving it to you evenlessnarkypuffin

thefirstMrsDever Well said all of it.

Georgimanner, I will not respond to any further comments from you, because the topic is derailing the thread (my fault, not yours). If you think that speeding is not endangering anybody's life other than the driver's own, even an open road, then I really hope you are not a driver.

I think you need to think a bit more about how many kids and adults are killed or seriously injured each year by the actions of car drivers and then think about how many people have been killed or seriously injured by rioting over the last twenty years.

Troigarcons- i was going to bring up that the looters actually have let the police off the hook because they have now clouded the issue.

In the case stated by the OP, the working housemate decided that it was OK to travel to see if there was anything going free and was aided and abetted by the jailed mum because she was going to be allowed to store the goods at their place until they were sold. The shorts were the intial payment for this. I think that the damage done by looters in other cities outside of London cannot be underestimated, not in financial terms but from the blocking of any useful debates on the cause of some of the problems eg gangs.

btw, to all those saying that community service would have been a more appropriate punishment. do any of you have any idea of what community service entails?

I admit that I (certainly hope!) that this is not widespread, but a previous colleague of mine was sentanced to community service for a violent incident. i don't want to go into details, since i'm already known to one of my current colleagues on here and this is a tiny industry i work in, BUT basically he got caught (obviously) after threatening a public servant after a council tax payment dispute - worse, he'd bumped into the same guy going out on his lunch after the row, and basically abused him a second time AND then tried to run him over. complete with witnesses and everything.

he didn't succeed in running the guy over (he maintained was accidental, victim maintained was an attempt to run him over), but naturally the police came a'knocking as the council knew exactly who my employee was. i was party to this information because any criminal conviction affected this person's employment, and i know he got it put on his record, banned from the offices of the council dept where it had happened, and community service.

the subsequent "community service", from what i could tell, was spent drinking tea and chatting with his "supervisor" (a man he'd known for years) whilst supposed doing some cleanup work / litter pickup. basically a bit of a jolly, from what he said.

i've hoped, since being party to this incident, that his mention of tea and chat was something to cover his bruised ego (getting a conviction, almost getting paidoff from work) but that's merely a hope - he never gave off the impression he was boasting about (basically) getting away with it.

since then i've had absolutely no confidence in what "community service" actually entails - i just hope it's an inaccurate picture, above, or at least not a widespread one.

so how many have written to their MPs to comment?

or is it easier just to mump about on a forum or tut over your Guardian

community service is seen as a a "let off"

I don't think many on here realise how bad life can be on H.A estates. We all have the same social background and don't need this extra pressure that living amongst lawlessness brings.

Exactly.

I doubt a good many MN posters realise, either, from some of the opinions posted on here. Sometimes I read posts that are so naive (esp. on the "my neighbour is making my life hell"-type threads) it literally makes me laugh out loud at the middle class bubble some people live inside. Some, not all. But enough that it amuses me for a while when I see the pop up.

I don't think he was unarmed was he TroisGarcons? I know he didn't fire and have posted about this before, but there was a gun found wasn't there? Are they saying it wasn't his now?

In terms of sentencing "handling stolen goods" is generally considered to be more serious than theft itself, the rationale being that most goods are stolen to convert to cash (i.e. the thief isn't the end user) if there wasn't a "handler" , there would be no market, therefore less theft. Traditionally guidelines suggest longer sentences for those who handle are appropriate.

FWIW many District Judges in city centres routinely sentence shop lifters to 6mths where it isn't the defendents first offence.

Birds I am hoping that amongst all of these arrests there will be many gang members jailed and taken off the streets. These are the ones thoroughly deserving of very long sentences and I hope that happens.