Man jailed for fighting off knife-wielding attacker. Attacker goes free

[Tanasi]

While I disagree with you on a number of points, I agree with you on this. it's certainly the perception (and probably the reality) that convicted felons over here are going to get off lighter than they really should. I'm all for allowing the police to take over justice and the legal system to apply sanctions, but the punishments involved are generally derisory. With more and more criminals around (if you believe the tabloids), there are fewer and fewer resources for applying to miscreants.

Want to act like a thug? The state should slap you right down.

Rapscallion

The burgler should be thankful this happened there instead of here. Here they could have beaten him to death and walked away. Sometimes you when you put yourself in harmsway harm will visit you.
Out of curriousity how many burgleries would this fellow have to be convicted of before something would be done with him? Do you all have the right to a jury trial? Did the beaters get a jury trial?

you're making the assumption he hasn't. greenday hasn't said one way or the other, but even if he hasn't, i have. and guess what? i still feel that these men deserve to go to jail. even in the heat of the moment i was still able to show appropriate restraint, using only enough force to stop my attacker and then calling the authorities to deal with him properly.

I make that assumption because very very few people have actually had to fight for their life against another person or another thing. From your description in my opinion I doubt your fight was that intense. The fight I was in we were both too busy avoiding getting stabbed and shot to call 911 even if there had been one. I thought myself lucky that I prevailed otherwise at best I would have got a steel box in the ground.

[Greenday]

I make that assumption because very very few people have actually had to fight for their life against another person or another thing. From your description in my opinion I doubt your fight was that intense. The fight I was in we were both too busy avoiding getting stabbed and shot to call 911 even if there had been one. I thought myself lucky that I prevailed otherwise at best I would have got a steel box in the ground.

Ironic, the main story at hand didn't involve life or death either...just for the robber it did.

[Tanasi]

Ironic, the main story at hand didn't involve life or death either...just for the robber it did.

And if the robber was making an honest living he wouldn't have been in that position.

[Greenday]

And if the robber was making an honest living he wouldn't have been in that position.

Getting robbed doesn't make up for assaulting someone and nearly killing them. The penalty is extremely excessive and criminal in my opinion.

[Skelly]

While I agree that the punishments given out are generally too soft, the media is always looking for cases they can promote/distort to prove/support their particular agendas. Not quite open and shut as 'all criminals get it easy'.

I'd really like to see some figures for average sentence lengths for particular crimes over the last few decades.

Rapscallion

True, but the fact that the media can find even those cases is pretty damned sickening to begin with. I do have to say that when your legal system decides to come down on a criminal, they do hit them like 10 tons of bricks. If you remember that case with that goth girl who got kicked to death by a bunch of chavs a year or two ago, the perps (who were all minors IIRC?) got their asses handed to them. Here, they would've received maybe 2-4 years of "care" .

[Nyoibo]

I'd just like to point out, they guy didn't just rob them, he forced them onto the ground and tied them up, it wasn't just a simple "Oh, I'll take this and leave"

[Boozy]

In this case, it was pure vigilantism. I'm not even seeing any real arguments against that. Instead, I'm seeing vigilantism itself being defended.

When we decided to live in a society governed by laws, we entered into a social contract with each other. And that contract states that the elected government holds the monopoly on violence. We can't just have people killing and maiming anyone who they deem have done them wrong. Anarachy would ensue.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

[Nyoibo]

I never decided to live in a society governed by laws, they just happen to be in the habitable places.

[Skelly]

In this case, it was pure vigilantism. I'm not even seeing any real arguments against that. Instead, I'm seeing vigilantism itself being defended.

When we decided to live in a society governed by laws, we entered into a social contract with each other. And that contract states that the elected government holds the monopoly on violence. We can't just have people killing and maiming anyone who they deem have done them wrong. Anarachy would ensue.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

In an ideal world, that would be the case, yes. Unfortunatly, the government does a shoddy job at best of keeping criminals in check. Even the ones caught are often let off with light sentences, so it seems to me like the government broke the contract first, and they are often not too interested in doing much about it, otherwise it would've been done already. Sometimes the only justice is the one you can make yourself, because the government doesn't give a shit about you.

[Boozy]

I never decided to live in a society governed by laws, they just happen to be in the habitable places.

This might have been some particularly dry humour, so apologies if I'm preaching to the choir here:

When you say those places are the only habitable ones, you're basically indicating your preference for the social contract. The places we live are habitable because of the social contract. The infrastructure that makes our lives comfortable is only possible in a society governed by laws.

[Boozy]

Sometimes the only justice is the one you can make yourself, because the government doesn't give a shit about you.

If that's the way someone feels, then the correct course of action would be to become involved in the democratic process and make some changes. Because tossing the entire social contract out the window will hardly bring more justice.

[Skelly]

If that's the way someone feels, then the correct course of action would be to become involved in the democratic process and make some changes. Because tossing the entire social contract out the window will hardly bring more justice.

True, but then, voting over here is mostly voting between bad and worse. Also, the problem lies very much in the courts as well, and judges are hard to kick out, even when they do break the law themselves.
You might say "start up a new political party" as the solution. Wish it were that simple. If there's anything that will unite the established parties, then it is the chance to stomp a new party into the mud. We did get promises of harder sentences when we changed government little more than three years ago, but since politicians are forbidden from meddling (for good and bad), the Minister of Justice can't call the courts and tell them to use the new guidelines for sentences. Then we have all the other fools, like a former Minister of Justice who didn't believe in sentences after all, or the prison warden who don't believe in prisons at all and who is convinced everyone in there would become better if we were to hug them a bit.

In short, the entire system is broken more or less. The government have broken the contract to begin with, so I'm not exactly thrilled at still being bound by it, and I would probably do the same as the gentleman in question whose home got invaded. Perhaps the criminal class would take the hint once their friends started turning up in dumpsters with their heads caved in, or dropped off outside the hospital with their genitals removed?

[jackfaire]

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

It's not even an eye for an eye in this case. One of the oldest sets of codes the law of Hammurabi said the punishment should fit the crime. Beating someone near death is not like robbing someone tied up or not.

Thief took an eye they took an arm and a leg.

[Skelly]

It's not even an eye for an eye in this case. One of the oldest sets of codes the law of Hammurabi said the punishment should fit the crime. Beating someone near death is not like robbing someone tied up or not.

Thief took an eye they took an arm and a leg.

Still, the beating stopped him more effectively than any previous punishment did. Just sayin'...

[Fryk]

This might have been some particularly dry humour, so apologies if I'm preaching to the choir here:

When you say those places are the only habitable ones, you're basically indicating your preference for the social contract. The places we live are habitable because of the social contract. The infrastructure that makes our lives comfortable is only possible in a society governed by laws.

I think what Nyoibo meant is that all the habitable land on Earth is taken up by societies with social contracts, save Antarctica. In keeping with the dry humor.