Brendan Harris and his mother laugh as he is questioned about murder

[NotAllThere]

Great, then we have thugs on the streets, who've been trained to kill.

Zero-tolerance policing. That's what's needed. Big crimes are carried out by people who readily commit small crimes. Act on the small crimes and you'll soon find that fewer big crimes are committed, because the criminals are inside.

[SueEllen]

Great, then we have thugs on the streets, who've been trained to kill.

Lots of them would probably end up committing suicide as it would be the first time in their lives they had to obey rules and be punished properly if they didn't. Remember most big criminals don't do the dirty work themselves as they have brains unlike these thugs.

Zero-tolerance policing. That's what's needed. Big crimes are carried out by people who readily commit small crimes. Act on the small crimes and you'll soon find that fewer big crimes are committed, because the criminals are inside.

That theory has been argued about and studies show that in the States it didn't actually work and one of the reasons for decrease in the crime rate included demographic changes meaning less young people.

[threaded]

That theory has been argued about and studies show that in the States it didn't actually work and one of the reasons for decrease in the crime rate included demographic changes meaning less young people.

That's a rather polite way of saying they gave free abortions to black women.

[SueEllen]

That's a rather polite way of saying they gave free abortions to black women.

You said that I didn't.

Alaska and Hawaii are some of the states that saw their crime decrease and they don't have many black AA residents.

[threaded]

You said that I didn't.

Alaska and Hawaii are some of the states that saw their crime decrease and they don't have many black AA residents.

OK people 'who weren't WASP', amounts to the same thing.

[OwlHoot]

That's a rather polite way of saying they gave free abortions to black women.

Yup, and not just black women. It's all explained, along with lots of other fascinating and sometimes counterintuitive "unintended consequences" in the book Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner.

[daviejones]

The girls parents ought to let loose their own style of justice...they won't get any if they depend on the justice system in this country...

[xoggoth]

You can tell those two are criminals just from looking at them. High time we abolished courts and just imprisoned anyone who looks like that, the chances of wrongful imprisonment would probably be no higher than we get now and it would be much cheaper.

[NotAllThere]

All crime is commited by the living. So simply make life itself a crime. And possesion of which, punished by confiscation.

[IR35 Avoider]

I'm not necessarily advocating any of the following, but to give you a view into a different world, do you think we would have more law and order if

• Teachers, including primary school teachers, were allowed to cane children.
• Magistrates had caning as a sentencing option (for adults and minors.) (Sentence administered by police.)
• It was lawful for a member of the public (or a police officer) to shoot a suspected criminal if that was the only way to prevent them escaping.

These all used to be happen in South Africa. (Admittedly not currently admired for its low crime rate.)

I was nearly caned for the first time at the age of six, but was let off for my offence when the deputy-headmaster realised that having only ever had female teachers, I wasn't being cheeky but genuinely didn't know I was supposed to address him as "Sir."

The schools did become a bit namby-pamby later on, class teachers were no longer allowed to administer corporal punishment if you failed to do your homework, and the rules changed so that only the headmaster was allowed to cane pupils.

The law that allowed criminals to be apprehended by bullet was changed in the late nineties I think, after the media kicked up a bit of a fuss because of a couple of hard cases. One example was a young teenage boy shot in the back of the head by a shopkeeper. It turned out the boy hadn't been shoplifting after all, but the shopkeeper was found to be within his rights.