Monday 21 February 2011

........Beyond All Recognition

......with an acknowlegment to my pals over at The Thin Blue Line and following on from my previous posting, my optimism and faith in people is still loitering in the  "seek and ye shall find" mindset, where it has been for as long as I can remember. However, my optimism and faith in the British criminal justice system remains as it has been since around the beginning of my 2nd decade in law enforcement,  FUBAR.

6 comments:

CI-Roller Dude said...

Our "justice" system in the States is based on English law...one ideal is that people under 18 should be given a second chance. This "sounds civilized".
When I was much younger and going to college, I worked at a juv youth camp for males who'd gotten into big trouble. As I talked to many of these kids, they said the reason that they continued doing bad things is because they got away with it so many time.

When the finally got caught the first time, they got a slap on the wrist....so they felt nothing was going to really happen to them.

Most of them grew up and continued breaking the law. We figured less than 20% turned out OK.

So, my thoughts were when I became a cop...is to be fair, but hard on the ones who'd done really bad things to others. I'd take the time to really have a talk with them to see how much other crap they'd done. If I found that they'd done a lot of bad things but just hadn't been caught, I did everything I could to make sure they go locked up.

Hogdayafternoon said...

CI-RD: You have just stated what was pretty much my own personal approach. I didn't care if people into, or on the edge of, lawbreaking disliked me or were a bit scared of me, even when I was a community beat officer with my own villages and rural area. The good guys had nothing to fear. I tried to let my actions speak as firmly as my words. If the rest of the system fouled up at least I'd kept my conscience clear and could look my community in the eye.

JuliaM said...

If we can't punish the thug who did this, or the two girls who tore a baby from it's sister's arms and threw it into the road (secure in the knowledge that no-one would intervene to stop them), who CAN we punish?

Hmmm. Maybe that's the reason for this insistence on leniency for budding young criminals..?

Hogdayafternoon said...

JuliaM: We can't carry on subliminally training people to disobey the law.

Lana: I'm cheering myself up by reading a book about the Nazi's ;)

TonyF: Goolies first.

JuliaM said...

"JuliaM: We can't carry on subliminally training people to disobey the law."

And yet, with Ken Clarke in charge, all the evidence seems to point to us continuing to do just that...

Anonymous said...

We joined up about the same time Hoggie. My policing and other 'career' activities never extended much beyond trying to do what I thought was right. Some of my initial supervisors still (for an atheist) remain in memory as 'gods' - often they were 'just' experienced cops with wider life experience.
I don't see a particular problem with policing - the current crap is socially wide, bureaucratic and as ethical as lawyers.