Legislate to control or punish to deter?

Most of us will have heard about the case of the nursery school worker who abused children under her care. I was listening to the radio on the way to University and was shocked at some of the measures proposed eg CCTV cameras in all nurseries, carers being forbidden to take mobile phones to work, even more checks on character and criminal record etc etc etc. The problem is that these measures will affect innocent people more than the guilty. The lady in question will receive, as punishment for her crimes, a short stint in prison, a criminal record and a new identity, courtesy of the taxpayer, after her release. All the multitude of innocent people will receive as punishment for being innocent, a lifetime of restrictions on their freedom! How does that add up?

Look at the case of the two lads who kicked a man to death in the street for no reason other than their drink fueled anger. They received 11 and 13 years. They will be out before they are 30 and can live their lives happily ever after. The rest of us will have to suffer further restrictions on our freedom by being told, if we make the dreadful mistake of going to the supermarket with our underage child, that we can't buy the alcohol we have in our basket or the recent one where a girl was told she couldn't by teaspoons because she was under 25!!!

So every time a crime happens, the government of the day decides to create more restrictions on the freedoms of the innocent in order to avoid the crime happening again. So the end result is that life loses any hint of pleasure and ends up a constant struggle to conform to the myriad of legislation meant to protect stop the guilty causing trouble.

I propose a better solution. Punish the criminals when caught. Put the lady who abused the children behind bars for life, not life sentence out in a few years or a few years sentence suspended, behind bars for life. The two yobs who kicked an innocent man to death? Bring back the death penalty. Execute them. Punish the guilty. Punish them so that other prospective criminals are deterred.

Of course people will cry "Oh but their human rights" and I reply that what does being a human mean? Simply that one is born in a human body? Or does being human entail a certain standard of behaviour below which, if you fall, you lose some of the perks and rights that other humans enjoy? I say that human rights are for those that behave like humans and not for those that don't. I am not saying torture and cause unnecessary pain beyond what is needed and just for the satisfaction of the people administering such punishment. But punish according to the crime.

Stop restricting the freedoms of the innocent in an attempt to catch any criminal before he can act. That has destroyed life for the rest of us. Instead punish the criminals. Life is life. It is so strange that the newspapers don't even have a rudimentary understanding of the English language. They always say "so and so was Jailed for life...." and then add "will serve a minimum of so many years..." In my book "Jailed for life" means just that. The newspapers should say that "so and so was sentenced to a life stigma for his crime but will serve X number of years for it". That would be the correct description of the event.

So how to stop the criminals? Deter them. Punish them. Severely and swiftly. That will deter enough from taking up crime. As it is now a person can murder and be out on the streets in 10 years. While the rest of us have to suffer this incredible intrusion of the state into every aspect of our personal life for the rest of time.