Thread: British Law?

Originally Posted by HNSB

IMO, penalties for most crimes are not severe enough in the US. I don't know about other countries.

The problem in the US is that there is too much that is criminalized to punish people too harshly. The jails and prisons are overcrowded with non-violent offenders with no relief to the problem in sight.

Originally Posted by Theseus

The problem in the US is that there is too much that is criminalized to punish people too harshly. The jails and prisons are overcrowded with non-violent offenders with no relief to the problem in sight.

We have the same problem in the UK, far too many people are incarcerated for 'petty' offences, for example, it's against the law here to watch TV without a licence, the penalty is a fine, non payment of means prison, the authorities have incarcerated old age pensioners for this heinous crime.

Filling prisons with people who would be better dealt with another way is not the way forward IMHO

The US has the death penalty, we abolished it years ago so our ultimate sanction is a life sentence, in reality this equates to about 10 years, if we had a referendum now to bring back capital punishment, I would not be surprised to see the hangman back in business.