No. 15 Punishments That Fit the Crime

In these heady days of lenient sentencing and punishments unfitting of the crime, isn’t it reassuring to know that there’s one judge out there keeping his feet firmly on the ground?

In doing so he flies in the face of popular criticism levelled at the modern judiciary by issuing sensible sentences that cock a proverbial snook at the barking mad stereotype Judges presently enjoy.

I refer, of course, to the eminent Judge Lord Matthews, who this week dealt with a mad Glaswegian who’d strangled his wife to death after she refused to give him any beer money, by banning him from going to the pub.

If only more Judges would take such a sensible, yet draconian, an attitude towards murder, robbery, and abuse, as he so obviously does, then perhaps we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.

What better way to dissuade a man from a life of crime than barring him from his favourite boozer? What possible better punishment could a civilised society mete out to its wayward denizens?

Twenty years shovel? Do me a favour. Hanging from the neck until dead? I’ll take two of them. Transportation to the furthest, most inhospitable reaches of the globe? Where do I book my ticket?

A ban from every licensed premises upon God’s green earth, for an entire year?

WHAT? Anything but that, your honour. I promise I’ll never do it again.

It’s the kind of stuff that any right-thinking man’s nightmares are fashioned from. I call for the statute books to be rewritten and for this to be adopted as a blanket sentence for all serious crime.

Murder. Drug dealing. Robbery with menaces. Breaking and entering. GBH. Bestiality. It’d certainly make me think twice before committing any of them.

So Judge Matthews - righteous saviour of barmy Glaswegians, wife-beaters, killers, and hardened drinkers everywhere - I tip the trilby in your direction.

You shall henceforth be named the spiritual father to the Not What it Used to Be Justice Department, should we ever get around to forming one.

You sir, are truly a credit to the bench, the judicial service, and the fine, upstanding tradition of law and order that this nation once enjoyed.

Hot dingle. Consider yourselves warned.

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