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Bluelighter
A Quango of Lord Chief Justices and a back door route to drug decriminalisation? The new drugs sentencing guidelines
By KATHY GYNGELL
Last updated at 11:15 AM on 25th January 2012
With reader comments
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...-sentencing-guidelines.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
By KATHY GYNGELL
Last updated at 11:15 AM on 25th January 2012
With reader comments
Our leading liberal lawyers on the Sentencing Guidelines Council have got it wrong. That is of course if today’s new guidelines are not disingenuous.
The Lord Chief Justices who lead it have decided, in their wisdom, for the first time, to set comprehensive guidelines on how the role of the offender and the quantity of drugs should influence sentencing. Is this necessary? No. Does is address what is really problematic about drugs sentencing? No.
You can forget the hype about prisons being full of drug offenders. They aren’t. Or if they are that is not what they are in for, or have been caught for. In fact we have the lowest and laxest rate of custodial sentences for drug offences in Europe. The supposedly liberal Netherlands has a custodial rate twenty times higher than ours. We focus on cautions and warnings – not even on fines and asset seizures which the Netherlands also exacts far more of.
As a former offender and prison drug worker told me, 'their Nigerian and Jamaican 'mule drivers' convince their prospective beasts of burden that the 'risk is worth it' due to light sentences if they get caught.
But the Nigerian and Jamaican tactic (of heroin and cocaine smuggled inside the body) is to have several 'mules' on the same flight and to tip the Customs off regarding a couple of them on each flight, to distract Customs by those identified carrying less volume and quality - allowing the others carrying the quantity and quality to sail straight through the Green channel successfully.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/a...-sentencing-guidelines.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
