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Peter Hoskin

Pete suggests


Who would want to be stared at by a thug?

Monday, 14th July 2008

One further thought on knife crime.

It's all very well suggesting that offenders meet victims to see the impact of their crime, but if I was the victim of a stabbing the very last person I would want to meet would be the thug who stabbed me. Indeed, I find the whole move towards so-called restorative justice (in reality yet another excuse to avoid imprisonment and proper punishment) to be, at best, insulting. The only place I would want to see my assailant would be in prison.

I imagine that most people would have the same reaction.

I have been assaulted twice:  a mugging and a kick in the balls by a complete stranger. And if I saw either of them again, I would - unhesitatingly - seek to give them a dose of their own medicine and kick them where it really hurts.

UPDATE: Heaven help us. There's some chap on FiveLive at the moment who organises meetings betweens offenders and their victims and says how it helps the victims to realise that the offenders can themselves be victims of 'life's circumstances'.

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Water

July 14th, 2008 9:39am

"it helps the victims to realise that the offenders can themselves be victims of 'life's circumstances'" this is a bit much .

Ray

July 14th, 2008 9:45am

All this assumes the offender is capable of the moral reflexes of guilt and remorse - something one should not take for granted in our increasingly 'broken' society.

THX1138

July 14th, 2008 11:26am

Ray- I'm getting a bit fed up of all the broken society rhetoric it's all just Tory guff. Zimbabwe has a broken society not Britain.

John

July 14th, 2008 6:18pm

The problem is that these lefty lunatics are dictating to the 85% of people who are sane. Anywhere else it would be regarded as a dictatorship that needs to be rebelled against. I cannot believe how docile this country has become.

Ann

July 14th, 2008 8:12pm

Numberplate has never been to a run-down council estate, I see.

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