How will it help anyone if this man goes to prison?

[DecisionTime123]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0rd0r5zez9o
Man kept his dead mother in the freezer, held her hand and chatted to her.

I definitely agree he needs to pay the benefits etc back if possible, but they are letting rapists out of prison as they don't have the room, yet this clearly mentally ill man has to be locked up? YABU = he deserves punishment in custody or YANBU = it won't help anybody, he should get a suspended sentence

Of course he needs punishing.

Oh sorry I couldn’t leave her so I kept her in a freezer… Didn’t want to be parted so I buried her in the garden… Kept her body in a suitcase in the wardrobe… plus put her in the walls to mummify so she would always be here…

Like murders paradise get out clause if they commit in a way unlikely to be uncovered if you can conceal the body for long enough. Like men who kill during “rough” sex.

It sounds like he used it to live on because he didn't claim any benefits for himself.

I would say the same if i was caught nicking his mums benefits

It sounds like he used it to live on because he didn't claim any benefits for himself
If that's the case, I have a lot more sympathy.

And that’s without the fraud of benefit money and stealing prescription meds whatever she was on.

Most offenders aren’t likely to own their own home, so who is going to be paying for their housing whilst they’re under house arrest unable to earn money for rent? Even if they own their home
who will pay the mortgage to enable them to keep living there? Can you imagine the uproar if the government paid off the mortgages of criminals whilst they were serving their house arrest! Plus the fact the government would also need to be paying for all of their utilities, groceries etc.

Plus what about their spouses or other family members who may have also lived there and might not want to stay living together once the criminal activity comes to light. It must be only a small number of offenders who live alone in a house they own outright with no mortgage etc costs.

I think we need to take a good long look at the most appropriate ways for people to pay their debt to society. Unless a person is a danger to others, I think there are cheaper and more productive ways to punish and rehabilitate people.
That said, I don't know enough about this case to judge whether the perpetrator is safe to be within the community. If the crime is genuinely the result of mental illness, maybe not, and a secure psychiatric unit may be better. If he committed such an extreme crime from greed, then that doesn't suggest he's the safest person to have around either.

I guess the problem with 'house as prison' is - who is checking and enforcing? We don't even have enough prison officers, so if each house-prisoner needs someone to check on their tag all the time to make sure they haven't just walked out and gone into town, where are these going to come from? It might well work out almost as expensive to carry out as just putting them in prison.

Benefits have sent people crazy. People will lie and equivocate to high heaven in order to keep their precious benefits to which they feel entitled to. First the poster who didn't want to spend money her mum had given her because she thought she should be able to claim benefits, and now a man who hid the dead body of his mother. What happened to going out and getting a job to EARN a living?

That would cost far more than putting someone in prison or a secure mental health facility.

If holding her hand and talking to her was all he had done, then YWNBU, but he stole £80,000 worth of benefits from the British public! He's a thief and he deserves to go to prison. And I hope the DWP gets at least some of the money back.

He was taking her money. If he hadn't been and he was diagnosed with some MH condition relating to failure to process bereavement appropriately, then maybe non custodial.

But as it stands he was defrauding the taxpayer and his mum while disgracing her dignity in death. And preventing her other loved ones from knowing the truth about her. It's a terrible thing to do and totally morally bankrupt. So I think he deserved it.

How? Surely most of the monitoring would be automated? Like burglar alarm companies? Again I entirely accept the dizzying depth of my ignorance on this matter!

Of course he should go to prison.

This. People insisting he replays the money are not really thinking this through. Pay it back how when he is behind bars? All putting him in prison will do is cost the taxpayer to lock up a man with MH issues who hasn’t physically harmed anyone. Meanwhile, violent sex offenders are being released early due to overcrowding🙄 And really, £78k is a drop in the ocean compared to the tax many of the super wealthy avoid paying via a variety of illegal and immoral means.

This country is insane.

he should go to prison for continuing to claim the benefits- not being able to let her go translates into didn't want a cut in income. It's fraud he is mentally stable enough to commit fraud he should go to prison.

When I worked for a local authority we used to manage Housing benefit repayments and it was ridiculous that our hourly pay meant it cost more to process the repayments than what we actually recovered.

you still need acual people to attend when the broken bounds alarm goes off

He said he 'didn't want to let her go' and 'wanted more time with her'. And so bought a freezer to have that time - this is what I inferred from that.

I don't think we can just disregard the hand holding - that's a huge part of the situation. Buying a card for a loved one is normal, keeping them in your living room is not.

You can't have people hiding their parents dead body and claiming their benefits for years and not send them to prison. Because it will encourage a lot more people to do it.

You honestly think people will start hiding their dead relatives bodies in freezers if this man doesn’t go to prison?

What??

He callously and horrifically kept a dead body in the freezer purely in order to be able to claim benefits. He is wicked.

All this holding hands and talking to her shtick is something that his solicitor made up to gain sympathy with the judge/jury/media. What a load of bollox.

I've got no sympathy for this bloke, he wanted more time with his mother - what 3 fucking years? What he wanted was her benefits and I'm glad he's going to jail for fraud. If you don't punish people who defraud the benefit system then there's absolutely no deterrent not to do it.

Hmm, true. Unless he had no income of his own perhaps. If he was unwell enough to think the freezer was a good plan I don't have to take a giant step to think perhaps he didn't think there was a problem with using 'her' money though.

When shoplifters threatening violence aren't locked up, people who have constantly claimed benefits they don't deserve get away with it etc, no, he defintely needs mental health care though.