Showing posts with label life sentence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life sentence. Show all posts

Sunday, 21 December 2008

Life.


Good to see that the powers that be seem to be listening to Mr Smith's commentary on current justice policy.

"SCOTLAND'S most senior law officer has called for heavier sentences to be available to judges in murder cases, with the country's worst killers facing terms of "life to mean life". In a controversial intervention, the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, QC, told the Court of Criminal Appeal yesterday that she believed the current options available to the judiciary were inadequate to deal with the most serious murder cases. And she called for a further review of sentencing in murder cases, as she argued that two killers had been treated too leniently."

But Mr Smith hates to have to make the obvious point. Namely that Ms. Angiolini has been Lord Advocate since October 2006 and before that was Solicitor General from 2001, as well as having held senior roles in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. Presumably she could have done something about this issue before, rather than calling for action now?

Monday, 15 December 2008

Life.


Some of our politicians are fond of saying that a "life" prison sentence should mean just that. In Scotland, official figures suggest we have a very long way to go. Another example of the reality beating the rhetoric? Life may not need to mean life, but it ought to mean more than seven years.

"MOST Scottish prisoners on life sentences leave custody having served less than 12 years - with some being in jail for as little as seven, official figures revealed yesterday."