Hundred year jail terms are merely a dangerous Cameron Gimmick!

As 2014 started to get into gear, UK Prime Minister David Cameron appeared to be moving towards an advocation of US-style 100 year prison tariffs for the most serious murderers.  The backdrop to this was a judgement made by the European Court of Human Rights in July 2013.  It is particularly important to point out that this judgement never made a statement to rule that some of Britain's most abominable murderers should be released; the judgement merely stated that there had there had to be a review of sentences, with the possibility that a serious offender could at some point be released.

If someone came up to me and asked if person X convicted of the notorious murder of person Y should ever be released, I will admit that I would probably state my preference that person X should stay inside at this moment in time.  But there is a bigger picture here which cannot be ignored.  A small hope of being released after committing a most heinous crime, gives the offender some sort of incentive to work within the prison system to be rehabilitated.  Do we really wish to condemn prison staff to work with an ever increasingly elderly population with no hope?

It is possible that such sentencing inflation could also move towards other areas of crime.  Looking at the US Justice System, we have seen a few high profile cases in recent years of British citizens extradited to America in relation to White Collar Crimes.  The cases of both the Nat West Three Bankers and of the retired Businessman Christopher Tappin, saw the defendants face the prospect of sentences in excess of twenty years, had they been found guilty after a trial!  To many British people, this prospect was viewed as excessive, in comparison to the likely sentence a British Court would pass.

As it was, both of these cases saw the defendants strike a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty, in return for sentences of around the three year mark.  It is believed that over 90% of  such cases in the United States are in fact settled by such guilty plea agreements.  I don't believe that I am alone when I express my own view that I don't really know whether the Nat West Three or Mr Tappin were really guilty or otherwise.  If Mr Cameron's dangerous gimmick were to become reality, a snowball effect could very easily see such plea bargains creep into the British Justice System!

Mr Cameron and his Conservative colleagues may well feel they have a cheap soundbite that will help endear his Party to some gullible voters.  THE REALITY COULD BE THAT BRITISH JUSTICE DOES IN FACT BECOME ROUGH JUSTICE!