Spotlight On Sentencing

I read the other day that a violent rapist and murderer - Clive Sharp - was sentenced to a minimum of 37 years in jail and warned by the trial judge that he may never be released.

My initial thought was - good - at long last the courts are getting tough with such violent criminals and my only other thought was should this man ever be considered for release - life should mean life, surely.

But that was until I discovered that Clive Sharp was already a convicted sex offender - who told prison staff that he harboured a long standing fantasy to imprison a defenceless woman - subject her to repeated sexual assaults and then murder his victim.

And he was as good as his word.

Because having been released from a jail sentence in 1996 for choking a woman and threatening her with a knife - Sharp went on to break into the home of Catherine Gowing - whom he attacked and raped repeatedly before cutting her body up with a hacksaw and dumping the body parts in the River Dee.

Catherine Gowing's sister - Emma - told the court in a victim impact statement that her elderly parents, who had harboured a dream that their daughter would one day take over the family farm and open a vet’s practice, have been left “broken hearted”.

Emma went on to say:

“My sister was a vibrant, wonderful woman, who lived life fully, with love, compassion, fun, adventure and joy. Our lives will never be the same. That man has caused my family unimaginable pain, suffering and grief and the recurring nightmare of what he did to her before she died.”

Generally speaking I'm not a 'lock them up and throw away the key' kind of person - but in the case of violent sex offenders I'm prepared to make a distinction.

My view is that they should normally be given a whole life sentence for a first offence - and if that had happened in this particular case - then Catherine Gowing would have beeb alive today.

Spotlight on Sentencing (19 November 2011)

For the life of me I cannot understand why Scotland's criminal justice system - has reduced the minimum prison sentence of a particularly nasty paedophile - by four and a half years.

Perhaps it's because the system doesn't feel the need to explain its decisions to the outside world - the news reports give no reasons for the appeal court's decision.

To my mind that's insane - reasons for decisions are given in just about every other court and tribunal in the land - as far as I'm aware.

So why not in this case - why does the subject go unreported and why is there so little public debate?

Now I know that reducing someone's minimum sentence - doesn't mean that they will be released after serving only 8.5 years rather than 13 years.

But that's not the point.

What I want to know is the logic behind reducing the minimum sentence in the first place.

Because like most people I imagine I find it surprising - sick even - that a person who would sexually attack and abuse a three month old child - could be sentenced to only 13.5 years in the first place.

All the evidence I've read points to the fact that such extreme paedophiles are dangerous recidivists - people who are highly likely to re-offend - and inflict misery on other victims.

The same is true of men who carry out violent sexual attacks upon women - but time and again we read about people who are allowed to acquire a long history of such crimes - until they are finally put away for good often after murdering one of their victims.

Or maybe not - because life in prison seldom means life in prison - in the UK at least.

Now I'm open to the argument that this is a much more complex subject than it first appears - but that doesn't mean the issues involved cannot be understood by and debated by the general public.

So why are we all kept in the dark - about something that is being done in our name?