Saturday, March 06, 2004

Two Deaths

Anwar Islam was found hanged last week in Long Lartin jail. An enquiry will be set up. The Prison Governors' Association will express regret. The Prison Reform Trust, the Howard League, NACRO and other pro-criminal groups will castigate the Home Office, and their complaints will be amplified by their friends in the media.

Johanne Powell didn't have anyone to campaign for her. She was 19 when Islam beat her to death over a 24-hour period before dumping her body in the street. She had over sixty bruises on her body, six broken ribs, liver damage and a broken arm.

As I think John le Carre wrote, that's not a killing. That's a party.

There are over probably over a hundred charities designed to keep the criminal out of prison or to assist him when he's sent there, from the forty or so 'nationals' to groups like the Quakers.

You can count the number of pro-victim organisations on the fingers of one hand. Does that say something about us ?

And the only one with any funding, the government sponsored (and therefore useless - I don't want a counsellor, I want the offender caught and punished) Victim Support, send people to counsel burglars who've been injured by their victims in the course of a burglary.

(They're also, far from being a campaigning organisation, bound by their rules not to campaign for changes to the law. Strange then that according to this site they wish for the majority of UK parents to be criminalised ...)

UPDATE - interesting one, this. I note the name of ex-Sussex Chief Constable Paul Whitehouse appears both on the 'Children Are Unbeatable' supporters list and as a trustee of Victim Support. He obviously deeply disapproves of any form of physical violence. His daughter doesn't seem to, though. Or did she leave home to find what she'd been deprived of in her formative years ?

I only asked.