Sentence By Life Expectancy

The government now plans to reintroduce the previously discredited idea of fining people according to their income.

But if it were really serious, the government would ensure criminals were sentenced according to their remaining life expectancy. In this way the prospect of prison would weigh with equal force on the young as it does on the old. The fact that a given prison sentence will deprive an older person of a greater proportion of their remaining years must surely be a factor in the lower incidence of criminal activity among the elderly?

So perhaps we will see 60 year olds sentenced to 2 years for burglary, while 20 year olds get 10 years for the same offence - just as under the 1993 scheme there were cases such as the one mentioned in the Telegraph where someone just over the drink drive limit was fined £1500, while someone else twice over the limit was fined only £104 at the same court on the same day.

While I jest, and assume my proposal would be laughed out of court - to be followed, of course, by the government's own whimpier proposal - in the back of my mind I fear there is nothing our lords and masters will not do in their increasingly unrestrained pursuit of the popular, the novel, the sensational, and the politically correct: whatever the cost to our traditional notions of due process and justice. And no thought, other than self interest, they will give to anything before they do it.