THANK goodness for the note of sanity from Colin Harris, chairman of Devon and Cornwall Community Watch Association (Letters, January 2).
Lord Woolf?s guidance to judges and magistrates allowing burglars to be let off with soft community so-called punishments is absolutely sickening to people who have been preyed upon by criminals.
Criminals have decided on their way of life acting as parasites on society and, when caught, should always be imprisoned, with increasing severity of sentence, leading to life for the persistent offender. Lock up a criminal and he cannot commit crime.
Rehabilation rarely works and should only be considered when full reparations have been made to the victims of a criminal by that criminal.
So prisons are overcrowded. I ask our rulers to put our taxes to building many more to enable judges to take offenders out of circulation. Colin Harris is right when he says that there is ?too much sympathy for the criminal and hardly any for the victim?.
Let?s have a real crackdown on offenders and forget about the soft touches such as three-day sailing holidays on rehabilitation courses.
D G Richards
Lower Odham Farm
Highampton
COLIN Harris is right in one respect: Sentences for criminals, but not short and sharp ? hard and long. Prison must be a deterrent.
In order to stop people committing a crime the sentence must be long enough to prevent anyone else from committing a similar crime.
At the moment there is a 50% discount on the time served. So, sentenced to four years the criminal knows he will only serve two years.
I suggest a minimum of five years for a first burglary, and if armed with a weapon then a minimum of ten years.
This will be tough luck on the first criminal caught, but it will be a deterrent to anyone else contemplating robbery or armed robbery. With drug-pushers the minimum sentence should be 30 years.
After a few years there will be plenty of room in our prisons, and the crime rate will be very well down.
Richard C Hull
Westerly
Moorland Close
Yelverton