Walking on Eggshells?

CC Terry Grange has taken a brave step this week in stating that boys aged twenty who have sex with thirteen-year-olds are not necessarily paedophiles.

I am now checking The Sun website daily waiting for their "Terry Grange gives the green light to paedophiles" headline which is bound to appear soon. This is the paper that brought us some novel Twenty-First Century approaches to tackling paedophilia:

• Men accused of sex offences should not be allowed legal advice.
• Convicted paedophiles should not be allowed into off-licenses.
• No matter how minor the offence, anything related to children should involve a life sentence and preferably hanging.

Judges must love presiding over cases involving paedophilia, as it gives them to chance to send a child-rapist to jail for a couple of years. For this we have to thank the wonder that is Sentencing Guidelines. These all-important rules restrict judges in passing sentence and if they are strayed from there is a good chance that an appeal to a higher court will be successful. The Guidelines are rarely tackled head-on as a political issue as it would just give rise to too many appeals and this would confuse lots of people - something which must be avoided by any party hoping to gain votes in an election.

One example of the impact of these Guidelines on court cases is Robbery (a violent theft). They state that if minimal force is used, the range of sentence available is just 1-3 years. If an early Guilty plea is entered, this means between 9-24 months can be given out. With good behaviour this means as little as 18 weeks could be spent actually behind bars for an offence that carries up to Life imprisonment under law.

I think this is a marvellous thing, as by tinkering with the Guidelines, we can basically stop anyone from ever going to prison again no matter what they do.

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