Perspective

John Onyenaychi has stabbed a police officer and a PCSO in London. Like another would-be cop killer, Kes Nattriss, Onyenaychi had been released early from prison and gone onto breach his parole.  Like Kes Nattriss, he was due to be returned to prison when he found himself bumping into the officers engaged on another matter.  Like Kes Nattriss, he was recognised by the officers, and he then slashed the PC across the throat when he tried to arrest him.  Like Kes Nattriss, he will probably now serve the sort of sentence he should have served to start with.

The Conservatives 2010 manifesto promised to ‘rebuild confidence in the criminal justice system so that people know it is on the side of victims and working for law-abiding people not criminals'.  But under the Coalition's latest plans, new sentencing guidelines promote fewer prison sentences for violent offences and greater use of the sort of community orders that the likes of Nattriss and Onyenaychi will not blink at before breaching.  More and more convicted recidivist robbers and thugs will be released early, and parole restrictions or community orders won't stop them reoffending because they've had to commit two dozen offences to even get sent to prison to start with.

Why isn't the Met Commissioner jumping up and down, pointing the finger at the criminal justice system and demanding to know how he can be expected to protect the public when his officers are spending days, weeks and months locking up the same people for the same crimes, time and again.

And finally spare a thought for the stabbed PCSO, who went hands-on to arrest this man armed to the teeth with a pen and a book of penalty tickets.

Is there any perspective from which this state of affairs is not utterly, totally and completely barmy?

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