Ex-joyrider who got Good Citizen Reward kills a pensioner while driving an uninsured car & running a red light
It’s not hundreds lost at sea after a storm, or tens of thousands killed in earthquakes, or in war zones. It is, in fact, relatively small stuff, compared to the horrors we read about in our papers and watch on our screens every day. It’s still terribly sad, though, for almost all concerned:
Craig Cundle, 26, scooped awards from The Princes Trust, attended Buckingham Palace and met the England footballer Rio Ferdinand, as well as being presented with a Good Citizen Award by his mayor, after promising to turn his back on car crime and become a football coach.
Now he is back in jail after running a red light in an uninsured car and killing a 66-year-old man. Jack Farrell was half way across the road when Cundle, who only holds a provisional license, overtook another vehicle and without breaking ploughed into him. While awaiting trial he even carried on driving with no insurance, without a full license and with defective tyres.
Sad for almost all concerned, I said – all bar one. I won’t be shedding any tears for Craig Cunt, I’m afraid. I’m truly not one of your ‘Lock-em up and throw away the key’ types but how many chances does one person need? What kind of truly pathetic piece of shit must you be when you get more shots at redemption than a room full of Christs are willing to throw at you – and then throw all of those away yourself?
It’s a great pity this useless little thief didn’t kill himself before he managed to kill someone else but that’s how it always seems to go, doesn’t it? You know what I find truly sickening though? That this little piece of pus and bones, after he had killed someone with an uninsured car, was blithely let loose again long enough before his trial, so that he could go out for yet another illegal little spin.
What’s wrong with these judges?
Believe me, I’m all in favour of serious rehabilitation programmes. I also believe there are, in some cases, many better ways of dealing with certain crimes than to lock people up. On the whole, prison makes people worse, not better. Still, no rehabilitation programme and no alternative sentencing will ever work if the courts are not serious about weighing some important matters. The possible rehabilitation of the offender is one of those, yes, but the safety of the community is another and, ultimately, a more important one.
Also, if you want to change the lives of young offenders, so that they don’t end up spending more time inside jail than outside, then you need to send one very clear message: That society is willing to invest in them and give them a real chance to turn around their lives – but that these offenders must get with the programme or face the full force of the law.
So, yes, give them a second chance but if they then re-offend, throw the whole fucking book at them. At the moment, we are giving these little idiots chance after chance after chance and the only message we are sending them is that they can do whatever the fuck they want, because society is never going to do anything even mildly inconvenient to them in return.
You know what, though? All those ‘Give them yet another chance’ types, who think they are ever so compassionate and ‘constructive’ are, in fact, only making matters much, much worse. Worse for all those new victims of new crimes these little arseholes are allowed to keep committing; worse for society as a whole, in terms of financial and moral cost; worse for all those other, stupid kids who will be tempted to commit crimes, because there won’t be any real sanctions; and, finally, yes, also for useless little bastards like Craig Cundle, who, after God knows how many pats on the head, finally does end up killing someone.
If some judge and some social worker, had been able to tell the little idiot that he would be in really deep shit if he didn’t take the first chance of rehabilitation on offer, and if experience had taught him and others that this was not an empty threat, then maybe we would now not be in the position we are in: With yet another life lost and yet another useless little oik now going to end up behind bars for God knows how long – and all of that because most of our Western societies are too stupid to give first time offenders the best kind of help there is: A helping hand and a very clear warning that there won’t be any other breaks for them if they re-offend.
What we do instead is tell them that it’s perfectly fine to commit crime after crime after crime. Hell, even after you’ve killed your first man the judge will let you go on to try and do it all over again even before the trial for the first murder has started. So, yes, I’m disgusted with this little creep who got all these chances and blew it – but I’m even more fed up with the judge who didn’t lock him up, and totally disgusted with the kind of societies we’ve been building for these last few decades.
It really should stop – but you know what? I know it won’t.
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