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Nero............didnt he have a BURNING ambition to make software.......

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In my opinion prisons and longer sentences shold be for violent offenders like the two low lives in the OP. Non violent offences should be dealt with in the community.

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In my opinion prisons and longer sentences shold be for violent offenders like the two low lives in the OP. Non violent offences should be dealt with in the community.

I would go with violence and persistence but otherwise agree with you. There are too many people in prison for non-violent crimes they are never going to repeat (remember the case of, I think it was Gary Hart who accidentally drove a trailer onto a railway line which caused a fatal accident? He was gaoled because he had had insufficient sleep the night before. A case crying out for a community sentence, but instead he got 3 years - a total waste of time and money).

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In my opinion prisons and longer sentences shold be for violent offenders like the two low lives in the OP. Non violent offences should be dealt with in the community.

I would go with violence and persistence but otherwise agree with you. There are too many people in prison for non-violent crimes they are never going to repeat (remember the case of, I think it was Gary Hart who accidentally drove a trailer onto a railway line which caused a fatal accident? He was gaoled because he had had insufficient sleep the night before. A case crying out for a community sentence, but instead he got 3 years - a total waste of time and money).

I couldn't agree more about Gary Hart, Derek. What happened was an appalling accident. But it was an accident, caused by falling asleep at the wheel. Something that could have happened to anyone. If he'd just driven off the road into a wood, say, nothing more would have happened. But he fell unlucky, as did the train and its passengers. Twist of fate and extraordinarily harsh outcome.

Jailing him was wrong IMO. For those who don't remember the case, there's an article about it here

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In my opinion prisons and longer sentences shold be for violent offenders like the two low lives in the OP. Non violent offences should be dealt with in the community.

I would go with violence and persistence but otherwise agree with you. There are too many people in prison for non-violent crimes they are never going to repeat (remember the case of, I think it was Gary Hart who accidentally drove a trailer onto a railway line which caused a fatal accident? He was gaoled because he had had insufficient sleep the night before. A case crying out for a community sentence, but instead he got 3 years - a total waste of time and money).

I couldn't agree more about Gary Hart, Derek. What happened was an appalling accident. But it was an accident, caused by falling asleep at the wheel. Something that could have happened to anyone. If he'd just driven off the road into a wood, say, nothing more would have happened. But he fell unlucky, as did the train and its passengers. Twist of fate and extraordinarily harsh outcome.

Jailing him was wrong IMO. For those who don't remember the case, there's an article about it here

Agreed. Intention and motivation count for a hell of a lot. Gary Hart was stupid but no more stupid than the branch line diesel driver who didn't see a red light and caused the Paddington rail crash where 30+ people died. And even though a RailTrack subsidiary (?sub-contractor?) were allegedly responsible for Potters Bar, no-one went to jail over that.

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In my opinion prisons and longer sentences shold be for violent offenders like the two low lives in the OP. Non violent offences should be dealt with in the community.

I would go with violence and persistence but otherwise agree with you. There are too many people in prison for non-violent crimes they are never going to repeat (remember the case of, I think it was Gary Hart who accidentally drove a trailer onto a railway line which caused a fatal accident? He was gaoled because he had had insufficient sleep the night before. A case crying out for a community sentence, but instead he got 3 years - a total waste of time and money).

I couldn't agree more about Gary Hart, Derek. What happened was an appalling accident. But it was an accident, caused by falling asleep at the wheel. Something that could have happened to anyone. If he'd just driven off the road into a wood, say, nothing more would have happened. But he fell unlucky, as did the train and its passengers. Twist of fate and extraordinarily harsh outcome.

Jailing him was wrong IMO. For those who don't remember the case, there's an article about it here

Agreed. Intention and motivation count for a hell of a lot. Gary Hart was stupid but no more stupid than the branch line diesel driver who didn't see a red light and caused the Paddington rail crash where 30+ people died. And even though a RailTrack subsidiary (?sub-contractor?) were allegedly responsible for Potters Bar, no-one went to jail over that.

Failing to see a red light can be a momentary lapse of concentration. Driving when unfit to do so through impairment of whatever sort is dangerous. Legislation changed post conviction and he could now be tried (if it had just happened) for causing death by driving without due care and attention. In cases like that the end result always determines the charge. If he had driven into a fence or similar he would have been charged with driving without due care. He didn't and people died hence the strongest charges possible were laid.

Having attended numerous fatals, removed mangled corpses from scenes, dealt with victims (nobody ever remembers survivors whose lives are shattered), dealt with grieving families and investigated the collision on behalf of Coroner and Judicial service I can say with a certain degree of knowledge that his stupidity deserved the sentence it got. You don't just all of a sudden fall asleep (unless of course you have a medical condition that causes you to). He will have known he was tired, known he was nodding off and decided to continue his journey regardless. I am also sure that if any of you had lost relatives in similar circumstances you would say exacty the same.

You may note that they are not called accidents anymore, they are called collisions. The reason being is that an accident is something which is unavoidable....

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Failing to see a red light can be a momentary lapse of concentration. Driving when unfit to do so through impairment of whatever sort is dangerous. Legislation changed post conviction and he could now be tried (if it had just happened) for causing death by driving without due care and attention. In cases like that the end result always determines the charge. If he had driven into a fence or similar he would have been charged with driving without due care. He didn't and people died hence the strongest charges possible were laid.

Having attended numerous fatals, removed mangled corpses from scenes, dealt with victims (nobody ever remembers survivors whose lives are shattered), dealt with grieving families and investigated the collision on behalf of Coroner and Judicial service I can say with a certain degree of knowledge that his stupidity deserved the sentence it got. You don't just all of a sudden fall asleep (unless of course you have a medical condition that causes you to). He will have known he was tired, known he was nodding off and decided to continue his journey regardless. I am also sure that if any of you had lost relatives in similar circumstances you would say exacty the same.

You may note that they are not called accidents anymore, they are called collisions. The reason being is that an accident is something which is unavoidable....

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. The difference between driving without due care and causing death by dangerous driving is frequently bad luck and the difference in tariff is a £50 fine or 3 years at her majesty's. I know people aren't going to like this, but you can't let the familes of victims dictate the penalty, it would be like letting football supporters referee the game. We've all done stupid things in our lives, just most of them don't turn out to be fatal, and there but for the grace of god go us all.

Generally speaking, Britain is at the top end of the European league in terms of the percentage of its population incarcerated in gaol and I suspect it is very unlikely that the likes of Gary Hart would have ended up in prison in any European country other than here.

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Failing to see a red light can be a momentary lapse of concentration. Driving when unfit to do so through impairment of whatever sort is dangerous. Legislation changed post conviction and he could now be tried (if it had just happened) for causing death by driving without due care and attention. In cases like that the end result always determines the charge. If he had driven into a fence or similar he would have been charged with driving without due care. He didn't and people died hence the strongest charges possible were laid.

Having attended numerous fatals, removed mangled corpses from scenes, dealt with victims (nobody ever remembers survivors whose lives are shattered), dealt with grieving families and investigated the collision on behalf of Coroner and Judicial service I can say with a certain degree of knowledge that his stupidity deserved the sentence it got. You don't just all of a sudden fall asleep (unless of course you have a medical condition that causes you to). He will have known he was tired, known he was nodding off and decided to continue his journey regardless. I am also sure that if any of you had lost relatives in similar circumstances you would say exacty the same.

You may note that they are not called accidents anymore, they are called collisions. The reason being is that an accident is something which is unavoidable....

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. The difference between driving without due care and causing death by dangerous driving is frequently bad luck and the difference in tariff is a £50 fine or 3 years at her majesty's. I know people aren't going to like this, but you can't let the familes of victims dictate the penalty, it would be like letting football supporters referee the game. We've all done stupid things in our lives, just most of them don't turn out to be fatal, and there but for the grace of god go us all.

Generally speaking, Britain is at the top end of the European league in terms of the percentage of its population incarcerated in gaol and I suspect it is very unlikely that the likes of Gary Hart would have ended up in prison in any European country other than here.

Derek the only people that die from bad luck in fatal collisions that are not caused by medical conditions are the people who are not driving vehicle 1 (vehicle 1 being the offending vehicle).

The last fatal I went to was on the A595 at Moota was where a pissed up speeding rugby player on cocaine killed 4 innocent female members of the same family as well as himself. The driver and passenger of another vehicle he hit escaped with minor injuries. Had he lived would you want him in the community?

My shift partner dealt with a 20 year old boy who had killed 2 people when he hit them as they turned into a junction. His speed was never proven but he ripped their car in half. He had earlier that year been prosecuted for driving at 78mph in a 30 limit. He had no pre cons and a decent job. Community service for him as well? He got 5 years and it should have been more.

I spent 8 years on the roads policing unit and saw a damn sight more bad driving than I did bad luck.

If you advocate community sentencing it is apparent to me that the closest you have come to some of the less desirable members of society is watching shameless on channel 4.

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Derek the only people that die from bad luck in fatal collisions that are not caused by medical conditions are the people who are not driving vehicle 1 (vehicle 1 being the offending vehicle).

The last fatal I went to was on the A595 at Moota was where a pissed up speeding rugby player on cocaine killed 4 innocent female members of the same family as well as himself. The driver and passenger of another vehicle he hit escaped with minor injuries. Had he lived would you want him in the community?

My shift partner dealt with a 20 year old boy who had killed 2 people when he hit them as they turned into a junction. His speed was never proven but he ripped their car in half. He had earlier that year been prosecuted for driving at 78mph in a 30 limit. He had no pre cons and a decent job. Community service for him as well? He got 5 years and it should have been more.

I spent 8 years on the roads policing unit and saw a damn sight more bad driving than I did bad luck.

If you advocate community sentencing it is apparent to me that the closest you have come to some of the less desirable members of society is watching shameless on channel 4.

Although I don't think you are really comparing like with like to be honest. Gary, who wasn't an irresponsible pissed up boy racer, realised what had happened instantly, and took immediate steps to try and rectify the situation. Had he been a few minutes earlier, it's entirely possible that a message could have got through to Railtrack, or whoever is responsible for signalling, for them to place an immediate stop signal on the train in question, and tragedy would have been averted. Would you have advocated 3 years then ?

Having once nearly fallen asleep at the wheel of my own car, following a bad night, I know how fine the line is between knowing you have to stop, and keeping going.

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Derek the only people that die from bad luck in fatal collisions that are not caused by medical conditions are the people who are not driving vehicle 1 (vehicle 1 being the offending vehicle).

The last fatal I went to was on the A595 at Moota was where a pissed up speeding rugby player on cocaine killed 4 innocent female members of the same family as well as himself. The driver and passenger of another vehicle he hit escaped with minor injuries. Had he lived would you want him in the community?

My shift partner dealt with a 20 year old boy who had killed 2 people when he hit them as they turned into a junction. His speed was never proven but he ripped their car in half. He had earlier that year been prosecuted for driving at 78mph in a 30 limit. He had no pre cons and a decent job. Community service for him as well? He got 5 years and it should have been more.

I spent 8 years on the roads policing unit and saw a damn sight more bad driving than I did bad luck.

If you advocate community sentencing it is apparent to me that the closest you have come to some of the less desirable members of society is watching shameless on channel 4.

John, 'a pissed up speeding rugby player on cocaine killed 4 innocent female members of the same family as well as himself.' It would depend on how contrite he was and whether he had ever done anything like it before, and just as important was he ever likely to do it again (e.g. was he addicted to drugs). Ban him from driving for life and make him clean care homes for 3 years - cheaper and much more useful. Having him in the community is something we would have to face up to in the end anyway, as he would eventually be released. The 20 year old you mention had previous and so falls into my category of 'persistence', see earlier in the thread, so I would support a custodial sentence in that case, yes. As has been said before, hard cases make bad law and you are quoting extreme examples here, there are many, many more which are nowhere near as clear cut, and people can and do show an overwhelming level of remorse. There was a case around here only two weeks ago where another 20 year old was speeding and became involved in a crash in which his two young passengers were killed. There will be no point in the judge sending him to prison, because it would have to be in an urn. He hanged himself.

And although it's going to sound like Monty Python's Three Yorkshiremen sketch, I was born and brought up in a tough part of London (think Steptoe's yard and you wouldn't be a million miles away), so do know a bit about crime from the receiving end. We are all the prisoner of our experience and our upbringing and I appreciate and respect that you are an ex-policeman, it is a job I would hate to do but seeing a disproportionate level of death and destruction can colour your judgement, being divorced from the immediate experience of related crime is, after all why we have juries. From my point of view, if you can be reasonably certain that an individual is not going to commit a similar crime again (and it wasn't violent), then what is the Earthly reason in spending a fortune sending them to gaol for 5 years, feeding and clothing him, and then sending him back out on the streets as a newly qualified safe-breaker.

As I said though, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree...

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I know people aren't going to like this, but you can't let the familes of victims dictate the penalty

I agree with you Derek. It's why we have an independent judiciary, often the envy of the world. It can and does lead to situations where the victims feel marginalised or ignored, which is also not a happy situation, but that's still better than 'mob rule' or inter-family Sicilian-style feuding.

The last fatal I went to was on the A595 at Moota was where a pissed up speeding rugby player on cocaine killed 4 innocent female members of the same family as well as himself. The driver and passenger of another vehicle he hit escaped with minor injuries. Had he lived would you want him in the community?

My shift partner dealt with a 20 year old boy who had killed 2 people when he hit them as they turned into a junction. His speed was never proven but he ripped their car in half. He had earlier that year been prosecuted for driving at 78mph in a 30 limit. He had no pre cons and a decent job. Community service for him as well? He got 5 years and it should have been more.

You quote the other extreme Dave - I agree that if a "pissed up rugby player" survived that particular crash they should throw the book at him, and I've also heard of cases where 20-years-olds with good reputations have got off with less than 5 years for crashes like that. The fact is, if we're not in the Court, we don't hear all the evidence, nor any mitigating factors, nor the judge's summing up and ruling .. we just get tabloid media spin with its populist playing to the gallery.

Although I don't think you are really comparing like with like to be honest. Gary, who wasn't an irresponsible pissed up boy racer, realised what had happened instantly, and took immediate steps to try and rectify the situation.

Exactly. His falling asleep may have been stupidity in that particular case, but the train hitting his Land Rover at that particular moment, derailing and then colliding with a training locomotive seconds after, that is surely an accident. Otherwise you'd have to say that Gary Hart must take responsibility not only for falling asleep (which he should, of course), but also for the precise moment he did so.

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Derek the only people that die from bad luck in fatal collisions that are not caused by medical conditions are the people who are not driving vehicle 1 (vehicle 1 being the offending vehicle).

The last fatal I went to was on the A595 at Moota was where a pissed up speeding rugby player on cocaine killed 4 innocent female members of the same family as well as himself. The driver and passenger of another vehicle he hit escaped with minor injuries. Had he lived would you want him in the community?

My shift partner dealt with a 20 year old boy who had killed 2 people when he hit them as they turned into a junction. His speed was never proven but he ripped their car in half. He had earlier that year been prosecuted for driving at 78mph in a 30 limit. He had no pre cons and a decent job. Community service for him as well? He got 5 years and it should have been more.

I spent 8 years on the roads policing unit and saw a damn sight more bad driving than I did bad luck.

If you advocate community sentencing it is apparent to me that the closest you have come to some of the less desirable members of society is watching shameless on channel 4.

John, 'a pissed up speeding rugby player on cocaine killed 4 innocent female members of the same family as well as himself.' It would depend on how contrite he was and whether he had ever done anything like it before, and just as important was he ever likely to do it again (e.g. was he addicted to drugs). Ban him from driving for life and make him clean care homes for 3 years - cheaper and much more useful. Having him in the community is something we would have to face up to in the end anyway, as he would eventually be released. The 20 year old you mention had previous and so falls into my category of 'persistence', see earlier in the thread, so I would support a custodial sentence in that case, yes. As has been said before, hard cases make bad law and you are quoting extreme examples here, there are many, many more which are nowhere near as clear cut, and people can and do show an overwhelming level of remorse. There was a case around here only two weeks ago where another 20 year old was speeding and became involved in a crash in which his two young passengers were killed. There will be no point in the judge sending him to prison, because it would have to be in an urn. He hanged himself.

And although it's going to sound like Monty Python's Three Yorkshiremen sketch, I was born and brought up in a tough part of London (think Steptoe's yard and you wouldn't be a million miles away), so do know a bit about crime from the receiving end. We are all the prisoner of our experience and our upbringing and I appreciate and respect that you are an ex-policeman, it is a job I would hate to do but seeing a disproportionate level of death and destruction can colour your judgement, being divorced from the immediate experience of related crime is, after all why we have juries. From my point of view, if you can be reasonably certain that an individual is not going to commit a similar crime again (and it wasn't violent), then what is the Earthly reason in spending a fortune sending them to gaol for 5 years, feeding and clothing him, and then sending him back out on the streets as a newly qualified safe-breaker.

As I said though, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree...

It'd be a bit of a boring world if we all agreed on everything Derek.

I'm just off to poish my jackboots and the oak leaves on my iron cross :P

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Good to argue without falling out.

Now what contentious issue can I bring up next...?

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Good to argue without falling out.

Now what contentious issue can I bring up next...?

I suppose you're all in favour of the disabled being frogmarched back to work, without making pathetic excuses like "Hey, I can't walk" ? They're all workshy cheats and scroungers anyway (I read that in The Daily Mail)

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Good to argue without falling out.

Now what contentious issue can I bring up next...?

I suppose you're all in favour of the disabled being frogmarched back to work, without making pathetic excuses like "Hey, I can't walk" ? They're all workshy cheats and scroungers anyway (I read that in The Daily Mail)

Unfortunately Peck they pick up on the ones who are actually workshy cheats and scroungers and forget the genuine cases (quite conveniently or they couldn't sell papers).

I know ex miners in my old home town who haven't worked in over 25 years (since the pit closed and they took redundancy) due to "disability" because the regulations were so slack in awarding benefits.

I know what I would do with them, I'd build more prisons and then.....

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Good to argue without falling out.

Now what contentious issue can I bring up next...?

I suppose you're all in favour of the disabled being frogmarched back to work, without making pathetic excuses like "Hey, I can't walk" ? They're all workshy cheats and scroungers anyway (I read that in The Daily Mail)

Unfortunately Peck they pick up on the ones who are actually workshy cheats and scroungers and forget the genuine cases (quite conveniently or they couldn't sell papers).

I know ex miners in my old home town who haven't worked in over 25 years (since the pit closed and they took redundancy) due to "disability" because the regulations were so slack in awarding benefits.

I know what I would do with them, I'd build more prisons and then.....

Actually, you can blame Maggie for that one. The Tory Government 1980s-style wanted more than anything to bring down the unemployment figures, so redundant miners, steelworkers, etc were all encouraged to "sign on the sick" as it wouldn't show up on the figures. And we all know how energetic subsequent governments have been at turning Corby into Canary Wharf...

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