Thursday 8 March 2012

Lenient Sentences and Sicker Paragraphs

The story about 29 year old Gemma McCluskie, an actress whose headless body was found in London is terribly sad, and my thoughts go out to her family and friends. Nobody should have to meet death in such a grusome way and so young. One would think most people would feel the same and no doubt the saner ones do (I haven't lost ALL hope yet) but there are also twisted individuals who think this tragedy is comical. They are merrily creating sick 'jokes' and posting them all over the internet, on joke sites and in news comments and frighteningly very few have pulled these creeps up on their vile antics.
Who killed compassion? When did it wither on the vine and dry with the sand? Some folk have totally and utterly lost any thread of humanity. Why on earth has a brutal murder become the subject of such hilarity? Are we so desensitised to violence and horrors that it has become acceptable to poke fun at the headless body of a young woman?

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Justice be done. Or we will be...

I believe a lot of blame can be pointed at our lenient sentencing. Afterall if the State thinks a crime warrants a lenient sentence, the public believe the crime to be not too bad. Five years for rape? Tweleve years for murder? Those crimes cant be that heinous then can they? If, as the Anti death penalty mob are fond of saying, a country killing its murderers are simply saying its okay to kill, then surely one handing out soft punishment is doing the same?
And this allows the rot to seep deeper into society because we start to see violent crime as almost trivial. Go back to Victorian times, or even as recent as the 1940/50s. Crime was dealt with much more severly then than it is now and as a consequence of that people respected the law of the land. Id even go so far as suggest folk had sympathy when their fellow man suffered at the hands of thugs and murderers. Why? Because back in those distant days, killing somebody meant you would recieve the full weight of justice. People knew it was a serious offence when they witnessed murderers hang for it.
Fastforward to 2012 and we are seeing killers freed before they've even had time to grow a decent beard! As a result of this, murder doesn't send the same shockwaves through towns and cities anymore so idiots on the internet cannot see the harm in posting tasteless 'jokes'. And there is no use being angry at these trolls, we have done this to ourselves.
The way to save humanity from turning in on itself and getting warped out of recognition is withdrawing the woollen mitten we currently use to punish serious crime, and replace it with something that will actually put a dent in it. Do this and respect will fall into place by its own motion.

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