Why we must take the public’s lead… and jail ALL drug dealers
It is not surprising that most people think that Britain has become soft on law and order
A major newspaper poll published last weekend revealed something that should surprise no one: an overwhelming majority of people think Britain has gone soft on law and order.
They are particularly angry that prison sentences are now so often replaced by community sentences. They want longer and harsher prison sentences instead.
As if on cue, the Sentencing Council comes to contradict the public.
The Council is an independent body, consisting of judges and other persons working in criminal justice. The aim of the Council is to ensure consistency in the criminal decisions of the courts.
Last week it produced a consultation paper on sentencing guidelines for drug offences, proposing that some criminals convicted of supplying the most dangerous illegal drugs, such as heroin or cocaine, should avoid prison and instead be given community service sentences.
The flawed assumptions behind this proposal tell us much about the growing disorder that has shaken law and order in Britain.
It is true that community service is only proposed for people convicted of supplying small quantities of such drugs.
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But these ‘small’ amounts include up to 50 grams of heroin or cocaine — enough for 1,000 hits of heroin or 1,000 lines of cocaine. That’s a lot of Class A drug users.
The Sentencing Council’s reasoning is bizarre. For example, it states that imprisonment should not apply to those ‘small-scale’ dealers who have ‘no expectation of profit’ and no ‘influence’ on any chain of criminal activity.
What world do its members live in? Can anyone imagine a drug dealer handing out enough heroin or cocaine for 1,000 hits without any expectation of personal gain?
And the idea that a dealer operates in a vacuum, without any ‘influence’ on a criminal chain, is simply laughable. Big drug dealers rely on smaller drug dealers to distribute the stuff. They are all involved in the same horrible process of exploitation and slavery.
The Council’s biggest concern appears to be the predominantly female drug couriers who are used to transport drugs to British drug dealers from abroad, often swallowing the drugs in small plastic bags.
As the Council notes, such people are often ignorant and exploited, and therefore the Council considers them to be more worthy of sympathy than censorship.
But many other criminals could just as easily be seen as ignorant and exploited. And the fact remains that such ‘mules’ profit by causing exploitation, not to mention the damage they cause to society through the activities of drug users.
In other words, the Council’s concern is entirely with the welfare of the criminal rather than with the welfare of society and the need to protect it from the impact of illegal drugs. (On reflection, there is another obvious and no less unpleasant concern: the need to save money by reducing the need for prison space.)
Furthermore, the concern for the welfare of the ‘mules’ is nonsense even in its own light. For it states that if ‘mules’ are convicted of carrying larger quantities of drugs, they should be sent to prison.
But if they are being exploited so badly, then surely the exploitation must increase as they have to swallow more packages of heroin or cocaine.
According to the Council’s own logic, the more drugs they have with them, the stronger the argument not to lock them up.
Absurd? Of course. But that is where the flawed reasoning in the Sentencing Council’s consultation document leads.
These ‘small’ amounts include up to 50 grams of heroin or cocaine – enough for 1,000 hits of heroin or 1,000 lines of cocaine (photo posed by model)
The point it so conspicuously refuses to acknowledge is that all drug trafficking should surely result in a prison sentence.
Certainly, some drug crimes are more serious than others and should receive a more severe punishment. But drug trafficking is always so serious that the starting point for sentencing should always be a prison sentence.
The Council is under the illusion that small-time drug dealers should be given low priority so that they can concentrate on catching the ‘big boys’ in the drug world.
But the idea of a ‘Mr Big’ is little more than a chimera. For with so many users habitually selling some of their drugs, dealing is akin to a geometric pattern that is constantly expanding — with small-time dealers often becoming ‘Mr Bigs’ themselves.
The only way to overcome the growing plague of drug abuse is to impose appropriate punishments on every dealer. Instead, the Sentencing Council’s proposal sends another message that the law against illegal drugs is not to be taken seriously.
Such desperately dangerous signs are not new. Just last week, a drug dealer caught with a huge haul of drugs (including cocaine, ecstasy, three bin bags of cannabis and deadly crystal meth worth £50,000) was spared jail by Judge Stephen Holt, who gave him a 12-month suspended sentence.
In 1967, Rolling Stones Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones were all given prison sentences ranging from three months to a year for cannabis possession alone. After much protest, these sentences were later commuted to hefty fines.
But what a difference from today, when only a third of dealers who sold Class A drugs received a prison sentence.
The reason is that so many of the great and the good have been influenced by the relentless influence of drug legalization propaganda, which has effectively brainwashed them into believing that the biggest problem is not the drugs themselves, but the laws designed to control them.
And this in turn is part of the wider perception – currently embodied by none other than the Justice Secretary himself, Ken Clarke – that prison sentences do not work and only lead to a ‘revolving door’ of crime.
The problem, of course, is that the alternative to prison, community service, is just as bad at keeping criminals on the straight and narrow. The downside, however, is that it offers the beleaguered public no respite from the activities of such criminals.
The real reason there is such hostility to imprisonment among our ruling elite is that they have come to believe that punishment itself is uncivilized. Quite the contrary — without punishment there can be no justice and therefore no civilized society.
Among the general public, this essential moral truth is still widely understood. That’s why twice as many people chose punishment over incarceration when asked in last weekend’s poll whether punishment, restraint, reform, or deterrence was the most important function of prison, and even fewer prioritized rehabilitation or deterrence.
And that’s why a whopping 81 percent of the general public thought the sentences were “too lenient.”
However, because of such well-founded positions, the public is despised and portrayed as atavistic, unruly types by the more enlightened souls responsible for criminal justice policy.
However, it is these leaders who have lost sight of what justice really means. This is the root cause of the demoralization and loss of direction about law and order.
The ruling class’s confused defeatism about prisons mirrors their confused defeatism about drugs. They believe that prisons make crime more likely and that drug laws make drug crime worse.
But the truth is that the impact of prison sentences is being reduced by ever shorter prison sentences.
And it is not the law that makes drug use a bigger problem, but the fact that the law is applied inconsistently and the signals are fatally affected as a result.
Whether it’s drugs or crime in general, the real problem is a loss of moral compass among those responsible for keeping us safe. And that’s why the Sentencing Council’s proposals are likely to cause even more despair among a general public who believe that, when it comes to law and order, the leadership has simply lost the plot.