Braveheart

It's a brave man who burgles. So said Judge Peter Bowers in contempt of his own court as he failed to jail a recidivist burglar the other day. It would be a brave one who tried to burgle Batsby Towers all right. It was certainly a brave decision by Judge Bowers who apparently believes prison doesn’t work. Maybe he should have the opportunity to judge for himself – a stretch inside might be just the job to protect the rest of us from our own judiciary. 

But maybe he had a point? Maybe we should look to more positive ways of dealing with crime? After a glorious year in which Britain has rediscovered its appetite and ability for sport, we should be taking a leaf out of the athletes’ book. I give you Sporting Justice, in which both sides – the sinned and the sinners – get a fighting chance for a satisfactory outcome. The sport I have in mind is shooting. 

It has long been open season on the victims of crime, with angst-ridden, guilt-mongering Lord Longfords blaming anybody but the criminal. Now it’s time to declare a Glorious Twelfth on criminals. Don’t jail them; let them loose on grouse moors along with the judges who would merely have them tagged. 

If it sounds a tad barbaric it's nothing compared to the level of barbarism perpetrated on householders robbed blind and sometimes assaulted in their own homes. Victims are often traumatised by these ‘brave’ marauding souls and go on to suffer fear, depression and withdrawal for many years. So there’s nothing barbaric in my book about the perpetrators being given a sporting chance of avoiding a swift execution of sentence. 

On your marks... Load, aim, fire!

Sporting chance? Of course - they can run, can’t they? And a moving target can be pretty tricky; I reckon a handful every year will escape entirely… but they won’t be quick to burgle again. 

The Talking Eds have been blathering on about “predistribution” of wealth, a concept they’ve had all summer to come up with. (We’ve had it for donkeys years by the way lads. It’s called capitalism and it is achieved by having a small state.) But they’ve given me an idea. In justice how about, instead of getting criminals to make restitution to their victims, we engage in “prerestitution”? 

It’s very straightforward. The police already know who the burglars are, so why not cut the judges out of the process altogether and let the coppers mount dawn raids and shoot them right where they shit? It would be a fucking brave burglar indeed who attempted his antics in the face of that.