Only 17 months for this!! :(

[finisterre]

I wonder if you would be feeling the same if it was your wife/girlfriend, child whoever?

That is the point of Justice. We have the state take direct action against transgressors so natural revenge does not turn into feuding.

Punishment is a community judgement rather than personal.

 

[st4]

Sweetpea has a point. The cyclist did clearly have a big contributory cause and having thought about my previous posts too should face prosecution for a public order offence.

 

[davethemus]

“we should just re-educate people”

you're right about that, some of the spelling on here is terrible.

 

[fredT]

you're right about that, some of the spelling on here is terrible.

my spelling is good, my typing is terrible

sorry

 

[nurple]

Theres no excuse for what the bus driver did and I have only seen the footage of a couple of seconds before the incident, im not sure if you have noticed at one point the cyclist has his bike leaning across the front of the bus to stop it from moving off before swerving across in front of the bus to hinder its progress.....in my eyes that is pure provocation on the part of the cyclist.

If there had been a previous incident with the bus (pulling out without indicating etc) both parties should have been adult enough to get over it.

There seems to be a real holier than though attitude by commuting cyclists these days who expect everyone else to abide by every road law but are completely happy to jump red lights, not signal to indicate their intention, ride down one way streets the opposite way etc.

You just need to have a look at some of the helmet cam videos on youtube of the despicable behaviour of some of these guys.

Before you accuse me of being anti cyclist, I have been cycling all my life and currently own 3 bikes which I use often.

In fact on a recent visit to London, my wife and I were riding through Hyde park on our Bromptons (which just happened to be about 5pm) and the attitude of a fair share of the 'serious' cyclists towards us getting in their way as they tried to shave a quarter of a second off their journey home was terrible.

The Bus driver in the above incident was way out of order but you can understand the frustrations of vehicle drivers towards cyclists too!

Heres an interesting bike v bus clip........
Cyclist in London, nearly gets himself killed. - YouTube
Decide who was at fault here

 

[Dryce]

Clearly prison doesn't work - but nor do the other sentencing options that are available to judges. Figures for re-offending rates confirm this (and fail to include the many who re-offend but who don't get caught).

This is the warped logic I'm moaning about.

If people are in prison then they're not out and about re-offending. So longer sentences that get increased with each offence gradually eliminate the pool of potential reoffenders that are out and about.

Meanwhile people say prison doesn't work - but at the same time potential reoffenders get released early or in some cases don't get locked up in the first place.

However, with prisons full to bursting, offenders released after serving only a quarter of their sentence and violent offenders serving large parts of their time in open conditions there is no prospect of locking people up for longer.

Sigh.

The population is going up - assuming the stats on the proportion of criminals among the population stays the same then the problem will get worse.

 

[Scott_F]

This is the warped logic I'm moaning about.

If people are in prison then they're not out and about re-offending. So longer sentences that get increased with each offence gradually eliminate the pool of potential reoffenders that are out and about.

Meanwhile people say prison doesn't work - but at the same time potential reoffenders get released early or in some cases don't get locked up in the first place.



Sigh.

The population is going up - assuming the stats on the proportion of criminals among the population stays the same then the problem will get worse.

Sigh

We can't afford to just keep warehousing more and more criminals in a prison system that does nothing to punish, deter, educate or rehabilitate.

So it's not going to happen.

 

[John]

No, we can't afford to keep locking up criminals and so it wont happen, but having criminals locked up means they cannot commit crime.



The bus driver in this example would have been better off parking the bus, getting out and battering the cyclist instead...

 

[Dryce]

Sigh

We can't afford to just keep warehousing more and more criminals in a prison system that does nothing to punish, deter, educate or rehabilitate.

Ah well - no point in them really is there? Except perhaps for a core of violent or dangerous offenders.

Might as well close most of the prisons then .....

Just open up some adult education facilities and employ a few psychologists and run group therapy sessions.

 

[Scott_F]

Ah well - no point in them really is there? Except perhaps for a core of violent or dangerous offenders.

Might as well close most of the prisons then .....

Just open up some adult education facilities and employ a few psychologists and run group therapy sessions.

A prison system that offenders feared returning to whilst better equiping them to cope on the outside might be a slightly better idea.

 

[finisterre]

punishment and rehabilitation need to be separated.

short hard time followed by re/education until fit to rejoin

it suits both camps but costs more and why should we spend big chunks of cash on the least deserving?

Until we choose to see criminals as people too we are all stuffed.

 

[Dryce]

A prison system that offenders feared returning to

Is this remotely possible? I'm sure that anything that involved fear would breach some Euro directive.

whilst better equiping them to cope on the outside might be a slightly better idea.

Nice idea. Fundamental flaw is that even if you rehabilitate quite well it's difficult to get ex-offenders into decent jobs even when there isn't a recession. That problem has probably been getting worse as well due to shifts in work culture and competition from migrant labour.

 

[Dryce]

Until we choose to see criminals as people too we are all stuffed.

What if the opposite is actually true? If we cease to view criminals as people then that maybe opens up some new approaches.

 

[Scott_F]

Nice idea. Fundamental flaw is that even if you rehabilitate quite well it's difficult to get ex-offenders into decent jobs even when there isn't a recession. That problem has probably been getting worse as well due to shifts in work culture and competition from migrant labour.

The first step would have to be breaking the destructive cycle of crime linked to drug dependency that landed so many people in jail in the first place. And that is extremely difficult given that prisons are awash with drugs - often with the acquiescence of prison staff.

 

[finisterre]

What if the opposite is actually true? If we cease to view criminals as people then that maybe opens up some new approaches.

looks good
but we can't fix the exhaust pipe to prisons because we have to be able to trust the state to carry out the considered and legitimate sentence. If we execute most criminals they will not be coming quietly making a shoplifting arrest into a potentially lethal operation for security staff and passing shoppers.

Separating punishment and rehabilitation makes more sense.

 

[Dryce]

The first step would have to be breaking the destructive cycle of crime linked to drug dependency that landed so many people in jail in the first place. And that is extremely difficult given that prisons are awash with drugs - often with the acquiescence of prison staff.

If you can't stop the drugs getting in then an alternative would be to test prisoners and not even consider for release unless they've been clean for a given length of time.

But that goes back to the issue of keeping them in for longer - possibly a lot lot longer if they fail to clean up.

 

[markjay]

Setting aside for a moment the sentencing severity vs. leniency discussion...

As many have noted, there were two sides to this incident. Both parties were seeking confrontation. One ended-up with a broken leg, the other in prison. As is the case with most RTAs, the legal notion of establishing guilt is simply a necessity of civilised society.

But based on the information as reported on the BBC news website, they are both complete and utter fools and there are no winners to be found here, just two losers.

 

[Bellow]

The first step would have to be breaking the destructive cycle of crime linked to drug dependency that landed so many people in jail in the first place. And that is extremely difficult given that prisons are awash with drugs - often with the acquiescence of prison staff.

Wasting your breath there Scott.
There isn't a politician in the land with the moral courage to broach the issue and even fewer to support any that did. This is the power of the Daily Mail and its dumbing down ilk.
Until there is some change however, expect more of the same until we end up in the same position as the USA, ie merely warehousing those who fall by the wayside.

The (sad) irony for me is throughout the constant anti-European bleating, the UK failed to notice the corrosive Americanisation occurring which has been much more damaging than any EU legislation ever has.

 

[Deleted member 55947]

For those interested here's a link to Ray Mallon, the cop who brought zero tolerance to Cleveland. Check out his results record and how the Authorities tried to discredit him then ask youself why he was stopped
Ray Mallon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Dieselman]

This 'cyclist' has wound the bus driver up and paid for the consequence. What if that 'cyclist' had made the bus veer into an innocent bystander?

If there had been a previous incident with the bus (pulling out without indicating etc) both parties should have been adult enough to get over it.

If you read the article you will see the bus driver had already cut the cyclist up on the roundabout, which is why the cyclist was unhappy.

100% the bus drivers fault for the whole situation.

Having once had a bus driver use his bus to force his way to undertake me at a merging of lanes, then to say he had right of way due to being a bigger vehicle, I can understand the cyclists point of view.

Bus drivers hide behind the union protecting them.

The MD of his company didn't agree...