Prison sentences for violent crimes piss me off.

[Princessfuckingpeach]

Ever notice how sentencing for acid attacks or domestic violence, rape, SA, child SA are absolutely piss poor.
Look at Charles Bronson or Robert Maudsley's sentencing, neither ever hurt a woman or child.
Colin Pitchfork/Paul Gadd (Gary Glitter) etc get let out to reoffend.
Even acid attacks and their horrific nature aren't given massive sentences from what I've seen?
My theory is because it doesn't really affect men.
I just find the prison sentencing in the UK to be a bad joke and I'm prepared here with my hard hat on to be told I'm unreasonable.
But with the rise of incels, violent porn, the Andrew Tate brigade etc, that times are just getting worse for women and children?

YANBU, it’s absolutely shocking and let’s everyone down including the offender:

Honestly I think that's key here also, these people do not get as much help as they need to be able to function in society again.

What inspired this post actually was a school friend (over 25 years ago now) was in our local paper for a suspended sentence for 9000 images of cat A child and animal abuse images.

Literally nothing to be done. He might not be someone I'd want to be friends with any longer but his victims and I do believe downloading these images leaves victims, they deserve him to at least have had an attempt at getting some professional help with his desires.
As does he, he's obviously very sick mentally and needs help.

I agree with you about sentencing, however, I’m not sure it’s true that violent crime doesn’t really affect men. Men are significantly more likely to be the victim of violent crime, as well as being significantly more likely to be the perpetrators.

Apologies, I was meaning more acid attacks with that but wrote it in a quick bit of rage!

I get that, I have sons and daughters and fear them growing up in these times equally.

Yes The rate for reoffending is insanely high. It’s not just because of a woeful probation service offer but, I believe, because the retribution aspect takes so much time, patience and input from services.

The main purpose of the sentencing guidelines these days is to keep the prison population down to minimise overcrowding. Victims barely come into the equation.

What 'help' do you propose these people get op?

OP are you saying your school friend committed that offence 25 years ago?

No, sorry! He was a friend over 25 years ago!

Look at this way OP.

Your friend may have "only" got a suspended sentence.

But his name has been in the papers and no doubt shared on social media. He will be publically shamed and will be in fear of vigilante attacks.

He will have lost his job.

He will have lost his family and friends.

Do you think he has not been punished?

And yes I hope he gets help.

Certainly something.
Recently I was involved with a family who's father committed heinous sex crimes involving his own DD and DSD for over 5 years.
He served 3 years of his 6 year sentence and during his time in the prison for child sex offenders received absolutely no form of rehabilitation. He has since gone on to try to force contact with his victims and quite sincerely has no idea the impact on his victims. Surely to hell, there should be something in place where he is made to understand the severity of his actions? He served his time, back out, name changed by deed poll and for him it's all over.

I can't imagine many of these people who commit such crimes will ever go on to be functioning members of society, but as it stands, we don't even try the bare minimum to stop repeat offences.

There is definitely no deterrent either when it comes to sentencing.

A friend of mine worked as a psychologist with sex offenders in prison and it broke her, she found that the real deviants would simply form connections and that was about it.

It's scary, you look at chemical castration and it causes more harm to children because these people will use other ways then to assault children.

As for domestic abusers, people who use acid attacks etc, I have no idea where we'd start, but surely better sentencing and professional input is worth a try?

The alternative is they're back out reoffending and we have as a society failed their victims.

Do you have any ideas? Seriously, not goady, what would you do? Because honestly, written down, my ideas are quite shit because I suspect that many of the abusers I've discussed have no interest in anything but repeat offending. :(

I agree sort of, the reason Charles Bronson and Robert Maudsley will never get out is they will not behave in prison they attack the staff and inmates. If you can't follow the rules and not be violent you won't get out. They are a danger to the public. Crimes within prison are convicted separately to the original offence. I do think violent crime needs to be punished more severely.

I used to work with a group of London Prisons and probably about 80% of the prisoners truly believed they were innocent and were only there because of a set up. If someone believes they’re innocent you can’t help them. My role was overseeing advisors who tried to help the prisoners not reoffend, and the ones who actually wanted to engage were minimal

It doesn't work like a lot of sex offenders are very devious. They are some of the most well behaved in prison they try to groom and manipulate the staff. They also do this to more vulnerable prisoners. You can try to catch them out with assessments , catch them grooming but if they play the game well enough they will get out and most of the time it's a question of if or when they will reoffend. It's the law.

When not if *

So basically, the only deterrent would be a harsher sentencing and that's unlikely.
How sad :(

I am very surprised your friend only got given a stand-alone Susp Sentence. There are various programmes and interventions that Probation can offer sex offenders. Also, harsher sentencing would be no deterrent whatsoever - a quick look at the US will evidence that. The focus should be on prevention.

The statement "Men are significantly more likely to be the victim of violent crime" is only true if you don't treat sexual violence as a form of violence.

According to Rape Crisis, 1 in 4 women experience rape/sexual assault as an adult. In comparison, it's 1 in 18 men.

We know that many rapes and assaults go unreported, and of those that are, the police don't always act (never mind prosecute).

I feel that the context of the perpetrators life does need to be taken into account to an extent, for example a young person who's grown up in an extremely violent home and been brought up in care around violence hasn't been given a fair chance to learn how to resolve conflict etc properly. I also think age should be taken into account as we know young people's ability to make decisions and have solid foresight isn't cemented until at least 21. Equally disability, diagnosed poor mental health and additional needs should be taken into account for sentencing. But once you take all that out of the equation then yes for your average adult offender who hasn't been a victim themselves and had full capacity at the time of the violent crime, we should have much harsher sentencing than what we do but I think we also need better and more effective early intervention work and much more effective and more thorough rehabilitation work as well. We also need better mechanisms for reporting and evidencing crimes like dv, rape and sa.

I also think age should be taken into account as we know young people's ability to make decisions and have solid foresight isn't cemented until at least 21.

So young people aren't expected to be able to know right from wrong, yet many politicians are keen on lowering the voting age to 16.

I would not have suspended sentences available for sex offending or violence. These are physical harms that have long effect on the victims. It is wrong to suspend them. Violence or sex offending should pass the custody threshold.

The argument here is that the likely sentence length would not be adequate for the individual to access treatment programmes etc.

I've never been convinced that you can do much to rehabilitate sex offenders albeit that the government tries. I think there was some evidence it made them worse.

Violence you can do something I think. The element of public protection for prison is still important, with rehabilitation if possible.

Yes, one of the programmes was pulled but due to an increase in re-conviction rates rather than making people “worse”. The approach taken is quite different now and is strengths based.

Ah yes, "short sentences don't work, therefore we shall replace them with something even softer" rather than imposing longer sentences.