Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Nice sound-bite, pointless legislation


"Legislation will stop drunkenness being used as an excuse for criminal behaviour"

What they all fail to mention is that the courts already refuse to accept drunkenness as an excuse or mitigation.

All mouth no trousers?

The BBC quote statistics about the number of crimes committed while drunk,
but there is a conspicuous lack of data to show how many sentences this will affect or how many crimes the politicians think it will prevent. Could this be because the answer in both cases is none?

I was brought up to understand that in this country there are two components to the law, legislation and precedent (or case law). In this move it appears that new Justice Minister Kenny McAskill is whipping up a frenzy of hype and spin behind a get tough headline by legislating something which is already more than adequately provided for by the courts.

Ask yourself why would he do that, and then ask why is that a good use of taxpayers money?


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