Criminal Justice

The Magistrate on the criminal :

The trickiest was another woman of about 40 whose heroin addiction has led her to have a 14 page criminal record, almost all of it for small scale theft and deception. She had been arrested while she was already on bail for two similar offences, and by the book she should have been remanded in custody, for the obvious fear of further offences. She has four children, and is five months pregnant, and that's what clinched it for me. I re-bailed her, avoiding the eye of our resident police officer who was bound to be thinking that I was a soft touch. Perhaps I am, but she is non-violent, does most harm to herself, and I just wasn't prepared to send a pregnant woman to Holloway with the weekend looming.


and on the victim :

And next time I hear someone say:- "He'll come out of prison one day - it's us that are serving a life sentence", I shall throw up.