One of the morals that can be drawn from the analysis of totalitarian madness is that any reasoning system that is uncritical of itself turns into utter madness. Cold-eyed self-perception is the most important thing, especially when it comes to criticism.
– Sergei Averintsev
Anyone who doubts Britain is spiralling ever faster into totalitarian madness should consider this case:
Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday – after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.
The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.
In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.
“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”
This is not a case about whether law-abiding people should be allowed to have weapons (or even, in accordance with the 1689 Bill of Rights, whether Protestant people should be allowed to). It is closer in smallness of spirit to the sort of vindictive prosecution that occurs in petty dictatorships when you have failed to bribe the right people. But here the motive is the much more dangerous one of nominally altruistic bullying. A case where the populist fad of arbitrary fixed sentences for strict liability offences has met its reductio ad absurdum
Lest you think you are safe, recall that politicians are still involved in auctions of severity in relation to drugs, immigration, alcohol, offensive speech and writing and pictures – and knives. The sentence for possession of a knife in a public place without an excuse acceptable to the authorities can be 4 years in prison in England. In Scotland, the Labour Party is attempting to make imprisonment mandatory, deeming a severe new Scottish Bill insufficiently savage. Criticism is effectively not permitted. No voices in either parliament are raised for sanity. The moral busybodies are indeed omnipotent.
A ‘knife’ for this purpose is any sharp or bladed instrument, except a folded pocket knife with a blade less than 7.62cm (3 inches) long. So most tools are covered.
If you spot a potato peeler, chisel, or pair of scissors lying on the pavement, do not pick it up. That would be a crime. And you could be disturbing evidence of crime. Call the police. You cannot be too careful.
Well said Guy.
One of the things that puzzles me about this sort of law is what were Parliament (both Houses) thinking when they voted for it?
It is some sort of insanity, in which legislators do so many things wrong. Part of the problem, I think, is that they have been passing so many laws, there is barely time for them to read the laws, let alone think carefully about whether they are a good idea: and of course most of them do not: do not read them and do not think about them. It is, as I understand it, also the common case that Parliament has passed various sorts of enabling legislation (together with inadequately scrutinised statutory instruments) to allow ministers and the bureaucracy to add the final details of laws, rather than Parliament doing their proper job themselves.
As for solution (or might that be punishment) I really don’t think it would be unfair to dock some hefty amount (say around £1,000) off the pension fund of each MP, minister and senior civil servant/quangocat who variously voted for, introduced to/argued for/whipped in Parliament, or was responsible for in the sponsoring or enforcing department or quango. That would be around £1,000 for every such stupid law. For those concerned with the letter of justice, I’m sure something in pre-existing conditions of employment/service could be found in technical justification, like not doing their job properly in a parliamentary democracy.
Best regards
So the message is, should you find a gun take it home. The police won’t find it unless you report it- so don’t.
This story and numerous other stories like it have convinced me that it would be very unwise to call the Police under almost any circumstances. I believe that if you are a victim of crime you need a crime number in order to claim from your insurance company but I would certainly not involve the Police unless it was absolutely necessary.
Yes, he definitely should have kept the shotgun – it looks like some shooting will soon need to be done.
Truly astounding. If I was British I think I’d probably emigrate.
Sorry to tell you, nothing unusual in this. The American way of strife. We have books of nothing but bonehead
laws. Manson’s “helter-skelter” is all over the place.
Respectable adults are often frustrated by troublesome
small children and animals. This is because adults have
“learned helplessness” (wiki it) Children and animals try to avoid it.
The “mature” viewpoint is invalid. I have more respect for a possum or raccoon or rat that chews through wires
than for some “mature adult” who finds it “unusual”.
Compared to what? Unaware, unimaginative stupidity?
Conventional thinking is a contradiction in terms.
“The only justice in the halls of justice is out in the halls”
(Lenny Bruce) A baron hangs for what court jester says.
There are all kinds of uses for itching powder, whoopie
cushions, super glue, pepper spray(and mace), and for
high school physics and chemistry. There are wizards whose potions can have interesting results.
And, you think a Glock is dangerous?
Never ever initiate contact with the police. And if they initiate contact with you, say nothing beyond identifying yourself. Call a lawyer. And even be careful what you tell the lawyer.
So if you find a potato peeler… do NOT call the police, just keep walking… you cannot be too careful.
Aren’t the police supposed to be busy chasing actual, you know, criminals? I must have been watching too many movies…
I obviously need to get out more…or, on second thought. maybe not – I might just run into an abandoned nail clipper. Better to stay at home and bite my nails.
Why are juries cooperating in situations like this? The verdict should be “Not guilty, because the law is an arse”. Isn’t this sort of thing one of the reasons we have juries?
Indeed Michael. I think pushing the ‘jury nullification’ meme is an excellent idea, regardless of what the law says: once they are in that deliberation room, the judge’s instruction and the letter of the law mean jackshit if the jury decides otherwise.
What about the fact that the juries are a representative sample of the actual population, and the possibility that this population has been brainwashed into accepting these laws as sensible?
“One of the things that puzzles me about this sort of law is what were Parliament (both Houses) thinking when they voted for it?”
Honestly? I thought it was pretty clear that MPs, the media and the public do not believe that outlawing non-violent acts that merely might result in crime will ever result in people being imprisoned for non-violent acts that would not result in crime.
The argument goes something like this: “Guns are bad. People who own them are not the Right Sort. Even if they hadn’t done anything yet, they were probably going to, and even if they weren’t, do you really want to be living near someone who isn’t the Right Sort?”
It is our modern equivalent of imprisoning disliked ethnic and religious groups, essentially, and follows pretty similar reasoning. I mean, how many people who support gun control will also argue that you can’t restrict free speech, have arbitrary arrest powers for terrorism, etc. on the basis that the moral principle is more important than presumed lives saved? I’m not saying they’re wrong there, but their blatant inconsistency suggests their gun control views are based on prejudice rather than reason.
The real conflict here is pre-emptive vs reactive justice. We seem to have conceded the principle of pre-emptive justice without any discussion, and now complain that it leads to things that should have been obvious from the start. Pre-emptive justice, ie. assaulting the innocent on a presumption of future guilt, is just another word for crime.
As an aside, I don’t think the police officer was being personally vindictive. This was clearly an easy prosecution, and he probably had gun crime sanction detection targets to fill. That what socialism does to the police.
Alisa writes:
Ah, I’ve got it. Eureka: all thanks to Mr Anthony Charles Lynton Blair!
Noting that 50% are to have degrees, and we surely would not want the under-average (well, that’s actually under-median, but let’s not be petty) sitting in jurydom over us, let’s try all jury members from now on (along with nurses) must have a university degree.
[Aside: also remember that jury members must be on the electoral role, and there used to be more stringent requirements for that. Maybe the franchise and jury sitting need separating.]
Actually, IMHO, it’s a slightly better idea than the one about nurses.
Best regards
Bit slow with this one Guy.
CCIZ had it up yesterday.
http://www.countingcats.com/?p=4964#comments
But other than that, spot on.
Smite control recovery here chaps. Bother, careless me: I strongly suspect why, but it’s a reasonably sensible secret. The space immediately or close above, both in sequence and timestamp, will (eventually) be occupied by one of my ‘original’ and/or ‘different’ posts: editorial policy permitting. Don’t forget to come back.
Best regards
And here I was under the impression that the nanny staters had all emigrated and now practiced in America (the usual examples: Prohibition, various restrictions regarding sex, sex and commerce, etc). It seems, no, not true, there are plenty in the old country: the UK is apparently one of their nests.
Amazing story. I don’t know which is more scary, the law itself or the jury that rubber-stamped the whole thing. I think the latter because I detected little in the article itself that indicated anyone involved saw anything wrong with the process – well, except for that convicted criminal; they’ll say anything, you know (/sarc).
A society that has reached the stage where it not only criminalizes “normal” citizens, good citizens even, but then prosecutes and jails them is a long way towards, well… somewhere I don’t want to think about.
Strange that no one seems to notice the principal issue, which is the erosion and disappearance through statutory laws of mens re (intent) in determining a “criminal” act, or for that matter “criminal” failure to act.
What can the objective of Strict Liability possibly be?
In the U S, we are seeing the same trends, particularly in what is called “White Collar Crimes.” We have its also in torts with “absolute liability without fault.”
This trend toward prescriptive behavior is a direct result of abandoning the Rule of law for a “Law” of Rules.
R. Richard Schweitzer
Alisa, you silly girl: why bother chasing criminals when they can just come down to the station and self-identify?
Well yes, Kim, but is there an actual law requiring them to do so? See what I mean? So much to legislate, so little time.
RRS, I certainly havent missed it. Try my link to CCIZ.
James Waterton:
Hmm… where to?
“This trend toward prescriptive behavior is a direct result of abandoning the Rule of law for a “Law” of Rules.”
I don’t understand that comment at all.
Mike:
As far as I understand, the traditional meaning of law, in the common law tradition, refers to a set of precedent based customary rules, a product of gradual evolution of a body of rules which are commonly accepted as just by the population. By this understanding, legislation should occur only occasionally to deal with problems that arise from inconsistencies in the evolved body of law or to meet an urgent need for a new rule.
This differs from legislation in which measures which are simply desired by those in power are enshrined in law through arbitrary legislation. The above quote quite aptly refers to the current use of legislation designed to socially re-engineer society through legislated rules focussed on concrete outcomes.
Mike:
I did not intend to be obtuse, and I will not now veer into philosophical arguementation, but – since legislation is merely temporary (since they can be arbitarily changed at any time for any “objective”), it is no more than “Rules.” I think Law may be seen as remaining “permanent” until such time or on such occassions as its validity in human conduct is refuted (similar to the Popper view in science).
RAB:
I have now read your comment down in that link. Like yours, my education at the University of Virginia was in Common Law and Equity (whither Equity in the U S?).
But, I am still mystified as to the objective in legislating and enforcing strict liability. Whence comes that doctrine?
Yes – I understand the distinction between common law and statutory law, but those referents weren’t immediately obvious to me, and here’s why:
It isn’t clear to me that “rule of law” can ever be separated from “rule of men”, but presumably, this is what was meant by “law of rules”. Common law may have been more resistant to political manipulation than statutory law, but it was still “rule of men”. The advantage it had was integrity to custom and so a certain amount of predictability, but that’s all it was and trying to pass it off as some sort of abstract, metaphysical “rule of law” is a bit like trying to kick yourself in the balls.
Instead of this:
“This trend toward prescriptive behavior is a direct result of abandoning the Rule of law for a “Law” of Rules.”
I would have said this instead:
“This trend toward prescriptive behavior is a direct result of abandoning the use of concepts for the use of words.”
In Paul Clarke’s case the word “possession” – seems to have been taken in a crude, physical sense by both the police and the jury rather than the more obviously important sense connoting ownership.
Sunfish might not like this, but I go along with what Perry said earlier…
“Never ever initiate contact with the police.”
… for precisely the reason that these people are being trained not to use conceptual reasoning, but follow “the letter of the law.” I therefore regard the police as unpredictable and dangerous.
I have had quite a few run-ins with the traffic police – and always because of some transparently stupid rule, the observance of which actually exposes you and others around you to greater risks than does the breeching of it. But of course, they are policemen in a time well after Peel has been dead, buried and forgotten and theirs is not to think, theirs is but to do.
Remember, Citizen: the police and courts no longer exist to justly apply the law; they are there to establish your level of guilt!
Include me out of this. Other than “The officer who opened this file and the prosecutor who filed it both need to be punched in their daddy parts” I got nothing.
If I were to guess that this had something to do with speed limits…how far off would I be?
Thanks for taking the time to read my comments elswhere RRS, and congrats on getting QOTD, I understood what you meant instantly.
To answer you question as best I may (it has been an eon since I opened a Law book)…
Human society has always had laws to assist in the conduct of our affairs with one another.
These are sometimes called Natural Law, though there is no such thing as all laws are man made.
But they were originally predicated on an idea of Justice, what is communally considered fair and reasonable.
All societies have laws against violence against the person, Murder, Rape, Assult, etc and as society got more complex laws of theft, contract and property rights.
Those laws are relatively few in number and generally considered fair by the vast majority of the population, and so we happily consent to abide by them (in general).
Strict Penalty laws come from one group of persons thinking that there may be social ills or problems that could be improved or eradicated by the imposition of such laws.
These laws do not generally have the consent of the general populace as being fair or just, but arbitary and inflexible.
Hence we get parking, speeding, smoking, alcohol and drugs laws that you cannot argue with, or show mitigating circumstances for having infringed them. They are absolute. A ruling elite has decided that you must obey, and will punish you if you do not.
It is useless to say, for instance if you get caught doing 100mph down the M4 that you would not have broken the speeding law, but for the fact that your passenger has just suffered a heart attack and you are rushing them to the nearest hospital. It may get you a lesser penalty in mitigation, but penalised you will be in some shape or form.
And of course, stict penalty laws can, and often are, used to punish people that a ruling class just dislikes, actually causing harm to the general populace rather than for the general good thereof.
I have probably garbled that, but what the hell…
One of the tipping points between flawed, but servicable polities and those that are beyond repair and, indeed, beyond being worthy of repair is when doing what you’re told will not save you and even believing what you’re told will not save you because they’ll still get you for something, more or less because they feel like it. This guy is like the donkey in Animal Farm; a dolt and servant of the wicked, but still a decent chap, too decent for this country.
On a related note, I heard Nigel Farage speak a couple of weeks ago and I asked him what he thought about guns and knives and his response was, loosely paraphrased, “if we guns then we’d all go around shooting each other, like in America.” This country is f**ked. F**ked, f**ked, f**ked, f**ked, f**cked, f**cked.
Rule of law means action and interpretation according to principles, independently of the particular concerns of the actor or interpreter – this is in part what is behind the principle of precedent in common law, for instance. Generally, these principles are established by long and reasoned thought by reference to grander principles, and they in turn to grander still, up to the great principles of morality and just philosophy of law. These great principles, ideally, are discovered objectively at leisure and far removed from the pressing needs of individual cases, and, with that in mind, clearly what makes a given implementation of rule of law good or bad is the nature of those top-most principles.
Rule of men means action and interpretation according to the concerns solely of the actor or interpreter, in disregard for anyone else’s opinion or established principles. The actor in question may well indeed have principles to guide action and be well-meaning, but they are disconnected from what was generally understood as a given law was intended to deal with. For that reason rule of men is an evil, even if the principles esposed by the men at the time would objectively be identified as good, because then nobody really knows what the law is and is thus made subject to arbitrary law. Precisely because it is rule by men and not by principles, what one actor does may well be seriously contradicted by a future actor, and who the hell can operate with any degree of long-range concern in an environment like that!?
Rule of principle by means of bad principle is superior to rule by even the most well meaning of men. People must be able to understand the law is, for good or for ill, for them to make judgement of right and wrong and what to do about it. If the principles in question get really bad then the proper solution is NOT to espose rule by men but to overturn those damn things and establish new principles in their place. Yes, that includes by revolutionary violence if necessary – and that action and what it is intended to achieve must be objectively determined as required and itself operate by reference to principles.
Without understanding of the concept of principle the idea of rule of law will be found either meaningless or at least indistinguishable from rule by men – and THAT, not simply bad principle and not even evil machinations, is what is driving the push for ever more detailed controls over our lives. If you want to put a stop to this, then find out what principle means, what the right principles are, and abandon the ideas of expediency and pragmatism.
JJM
Pat: be sure to get an ASBO first.
Then the odds of the police finding that gun you picked up and kept are even smaller.
Dammit, that should be “understand WHAT the law is, for good or for ill.”
JJM
Here in Australia, we have had arecent win for common sense.
A few years ago, a man rode away from a pub, after drinking, and unfortunately killed himself on Tasmania’s roads. His family sued the pub for not monitoring him, and stopping him driving away! They felt the pub had a ‘duty of care’ obligation to monitor customers, and either stop them drinking too much, or stop them driving if they are ‘obviously’ drunk! The Tasmanian High Court also agreed with them!
However, the Australian High Court overturned this decision, rejecting nanny-state arguments in favour of individual responsibility.
So, maybe Australia is the place to think about emigrating to, despite the track record of some of our governments. They recently featured an article about Lightning Ridge in a newspaper, and it seems like a libertarian start-up paradise- no schools (you have to home-school), minimal county facilities, small number of cops. Something to think about! Whilst lots of guns are restricted, some are allowed, because of the wild life in the bush.
“If I were to guess that this had something to do with speed limits…how far off would I be?”
Way off – it has to do with road layout; trees, t-junctions and line of sight as well as surface quality and driving behaviour. Where the cops want me to drive is where I’m most likely to get hit by vehicles moving perpendicular to me. I don’t know whether they know this and just enforce the rules anyway, or whether they genuinely are too stupid to understand. Also, this particular rule is routinely breached – by hundreds of drivers – during the morning rush hour, but the cops never show up to enforce the rule until late in the morning if they even show up at all. Totally cynical. The only thing they are good for is taking measurements at accident sites, but anybody can do that. I gotta stop, because I could go on for hours about this.
John McVey – yes, but those principles are discovered (ignoring the objections of the physics types on here) by men and the matter of how predictable a set of laws are is a matter of the behaviour of men. It always reduces to human action, and my objection to talk of “higher principles” and the “rule of law” is that this deflects attention from the basic fact. The “rule of law” did not prevent the KKK murdering black men in the American south for example. What put a stop to that was men standing up and acting according to principle.
The distinction RRS had in mind is better served by something like “the integrity of the law to commonly understood principles or to contradictory statutes of which ignorance is common.” Or perhaps “predictable law” or “unpredictable law”. But the phrase “rule of law” in conjunction with its opposite pole “rule of men” obscures the essential fact that everything about the law is ultimately dependent upon men and how they think and act. It is analogous to one function of the passive voice in English – the omitting of the subject in order to deflect attributions of responsibility.
Is it illegal to carry a longbow about? With arrows? I have a sneaking suspicion that the standard 14th-century bodkin, if made of modern steel, would pierce stab-proof vests. And burgulators, muggdoids and beggars would give you a lot of room to move, while they back off smartly.
Mike:
I think you’re missing a crucial distinction – touching on it, to be sure, but not quite grasping it. Certainly, no written or spoken law concretely exists without a man to write or speak it, but the difference between rule of law and rule of men is the basis upon which a given man with authority to make law writes or speaks that law. What you are missing is how men get their thoughts on the matter.
Rule of men means that the final authority is only the minds of men, that even the most well-meaning of men think they’re entitled to do as they please irrespective of others simply because they have “authority” – it is subjectivism at heart. Rule of law means that the men who specify the top-most principles formulate their thoughts by consideration of something other than exclusively the content of their minds. The poorer implementations hold religious texts and belief as the source of principles and higher powers as the final authority. The better implementations are based on holding reality as the final authority and that men get their thoughts about priciples by trying to reason from observation of reality – that is, the best implementations of rule of law means the bona-fide attempt to discover and implement natural law.
Properly understood law for men’s actions in reality is in exactly the same boat as any other laws about reality men discover. Liberty will rise or fall depending on how well this is understood and put into practice, which includes men’s general thoughts about the nature of principles of any kind and how men should obtain and validate them. Your (and RRS’s) rightful touching upon the fact of men figuring out what to think and how to act is a restatement of the fact that nothing is ever going to save the people of a nation from their abandonment of the principle of principle and denial of existence being the ultimate authority for all principles. Your and RRS’s point doesn’t change the fact that, properly, men should get their principles of law based on determination of the principles of man’s action in general and that the respect for the rule of law is part of the attempt to do just that.
JJM
Are personal tasers illegal in the UK?
DD, due to an oversight, a Law allowing a Welshman to be killed with a longbow in the town of Hereford, between certain hours of the day, is still on the books.
Tazers are illegal for everyone except the Police of course.
So as with the law that took away all our handguns, the only people to have them are the police and the criminals, and it is difficult to spot the difference sometimes.
Amnesty Bins. The police wouldn’t do anything as sneaky as putting a hidden camera on them would they? Surely not! 😉
“The better implementations are based on holding reality as the final authority and that men get their thoughts about priciples by trying to reason from observation of reality – that is, the best implementations of rule of law means the bona-fide attempt to discover and implement natural law.”
Oh no – on this I am in complete agreement with you.
“Properly understood law for men’s actions in reality is in exactly the same boat as any other laws about reality men discover.”
Absolutely.
I really just wanted to make a rather limited point against the value of the phrase “rule of law”, not the concept of natural law itself. I have no problem with the concept (in fact I’m all in favour of it), but I’m very strict on the clarity of language used to express such a thing.
RAB:
In terms or relative “eons,” it has been well over 60 years since I returned to University after WW II.
But, I would guess that you, like I, have found out more about “Law” and its functions from dealing with human interactions than from books on cases or statutes.
To summarize and over-simplify: Natural Law in a society develops spontaneously and thus has no “objectives;” rather the objectives of the human actions and interactions create the patterns identified as Natural Laws.
However, Common Law arises out of the objectives for predicablity by most members of conduct of all within the social organization to adhere generally to identified and commonally accepted patterns
of behavior.
Let’s skip the “12 Tablets” of Roman Law which had the same objective by prescriptions.
Statute Law (and other various “Codes”) other than codification (in the U S) of Common Law, almost universally, has the objective of creating specific conditions and relationships.
That is where I lose track of statutes of Strict Liability. What is the objective? Does the statute of “an absolute” relate to establishing some condition or relationship? I don’t think so.
Strict Liability seems to me is an attempt to predicate the statute on an existing condition or relationship; not to meet some objective of preventing, controlling, moderating or fomenting the condition or relationship.
Among my aphorisms, I have said: Law is a substitute for force, to the extent it is not used a substitute, it becomes an instrument of force.
That seems to me the case with Strict liability as a matter of statute law.
Yep agree with that RRS, and put much more clearly and succinctly than I did.
On a lighter note, I heard of a case of an old age pensioner recently, who was fined £40 Strict Penalty because the Sun had bleached out his name on the disabled sticker in his car.
When he rang the Council to complain, he was advised to place his sticker where the Sun doesn’t shine!
Indicative, I think, of those in authority over us general attitude to us all.
LOL! I wonder if he did, RAB:-)
The jury were perhaps told by the judge “you must follow the law – you are only here to judge the facts of the case”.
But that is no excuse – the jury are as responsble (more responsible) for this wickedness than politicians and civil servants who wrote the statutes and regulations.
For a country to decline and fall there must be more than a small evil elite at work – there must be something wrong (very wrong) with the ordinary people also.
And this jury shows that well.
There is still, I am pretty sure, in English judicial procedure Verdicto non obstante.
Should the jury render a verdict contrary to the instructions on Law, or in total disregard of demonstrated factual evidence, the Court may issue a contravening verdict not withstanding that of the jury. That is true of both “Guilty” and “Not Guilty.”
But, I don’t think it is avaible to the courts of Scotland on most verdicts
Nevertheless, in cases of Strict Liability, I would hope the jurors would force the court’s hand – every time.
.
And then on the other hand, I have just watched this…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8341000/8341162.stm
What we ordinary citizens call Natural Justice is being denied. Not even being brought to Court, just to save money.
Our legal system has been politicised to the point where the real crimes and criminals go unpunished, but those like the poor woman who was followed home by and undercover police officer for threatening to smack her kids for being naughty in a supermarket, or religious people handing out leaflets describing homosexuality to be a sin, are persecuted and harrassed to the full extent of the Law.
We’ve got a case here in Aus that beats your case!
A twelve-year old kid is being sent to court for stealing a freddo-frog! (A type of chocolate sweet, in case you don’t have them.)
I’ll ignore extenuating circumstances, like he was a repeat offender, who had stolen from lots of shops, and had been warned. Let’s just stick to the sensationalist stuff – 12 years old! One Freddo Frog! Arrested!!!
Nuke Gray writes:
This issue seems to be getting a little convoluted. Theft is, at least almost invariably, a crime – in every country, all over the world. Just being in possession of a gun is usually not a crime: it used not to be in the UK, and still is not in most of the world. It’s human intent and actions, not tools, that can be criminal.
These ‘strict enforcement’ crimes have been, most likely, introduced to make life easier for the UK’s somewhat lazy and somewhat incompetent bureaucracy and law enforcement arm of the state. They also provide a non-benign state with the facility to subdue the populace by turning many more people, at whim though totally unnecessarily, into criminals: presumably for the ‘better running’ of said state. With such laws, there is an inevitable pull to make the state less benign.
It’s not very British, and Britain does not run better with them.
Best regards
Well, Nigel, we can all take comfort in the changes in England from the times when 8 and 10 year old children were executed by hanging for acts of theft.
Surely there is some history buff amongst us who can remind us of what those cases tell us about what had been stolen (my memory fails).
Still, at least those criminal laws had an objective as to human conduct, which can not be said of Strict Liability statutes – the origin of this thread.
People here have their differences (especially between social conservatives like Gabriel and some other people), but I am glad to see we are all united on this matter.
The situation is indeed terrible – but at least we are looking at the beast in the face, without any illusions.