Workshop burgled, now my tools are on eBay

[Phil Pascoe]

*bear in mind that if they were able to prove guilt beyond all reasonable doubt that the police would have sufficient evidence to make an arrest.

I had damage done to my property necessitating a couple of £1000's worth work. I reported it to the police along with the name of company the driver worked for - who had admitted culpability (but wouldn't give us the name of the driver) - and after many emails (polite on my part - a much bitten tongue) a WPC rang me - "we just don't understand what on earth you expect us to do."

 

[user 43593]

Telling people to just suck it up is one of the reasons that crime is so prevalent and the authorities so complacent.

Much law is centred on property rights. Watching society at large accept industrial scale corruption in our police, social services and political leaders while the woke ones among us want to sexualise 5 year old children with gender BS, has been a distressing race to the bottom. A supposedly civilised society accepting that there is the need for food banks (yet no assistance to veterans with PTSD) demonstrates just how far we have fallen from grace. People with nothing have nothing to lose and therein lies the root of criminal activity. I was on a jury in recent memory. A case of drug dealing from a council house. Involved all members of the same family and the police discovered £200,000 in cash on the premises. They wrongly ascribed it to 3 months 'earnings' from the drug trade and were corrected by one of the defendants who stated that it was 2 weeks money! Against such a background, how do you go about reducing crime?

 

[AndyMc]

So it's news to you that our "justice" system isn't fit for purpose? The whole point is that if punishment for open and shut cases were more draconian then there'd be a real deterrent and less chance of innocents being wrongfully accused. There's also the problem that crooks get away with their crimes on technicalities or via the ludicrous "asked for 5,000 other offences to be taken into account". If the penalty imposed were multiplied by the number of offences the toerag is coughing to, we'd soon see a reduction in crime figures.

Complacency and prevarication have no role to play in today's crime-ridden world.

And that's why there are no thieves in Saudi Arabia.

Oh, wait...

 

[Luckosaurous]

Remind me what the rate of recidivism is amongst those who've received capital punishment, would you? It's not a question of simply having a theoretical maximum penalty for something but rather its imposition.

Editing for typos is clearly a work in progress.

I’d rather remind you that your opinions fail to account for the innocent people who are found guilty.

If your opinion is that “an eye for an eye” is fair, then what do we do in a situation where the courts kill somebody who is later found by scientific developments to be innocent? Do we kill the judge, the prosecutor, the policeman who locked them up in the first place?

And actually I did just edit for typos, autocorrect has some very left field opinions on what I’m typing.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

In about 1958 there some "emergency editions" of the local weekly newspaper, the West Briton (in its day the biggest selling weekly in the Country) published. These were four sheets of A4 stapled together and were produced by the managers and apprentices who weren't legally allowed to strike, and my grandmother had kept the four editions of them. In one there was a case of a man who had gone into the local fish and chip shop, shook the pepper in the face of the girl behind the counter and demanded the contents of the cash drawer. At this point someone came in behind him and scared him off empty handed, chasing him down the road and holding him until the beat bobby turned up. He was gaoled for fourteen years - I doubt now it would even get to court.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

And that's why there are no thieves in Saudi Arabia.

Oh, wait...

I bet there aren't many.
I knew someone who worked in Saudi - he left his briefcase and his car keys in an open top car at the airport and they were still when he flew back three weeks later.

 

[JimJay]

When you say "our" justice system, do you mean in the UK or in Bulgaria? If you refer to the UK, a large part of the problem is the consistent Tory policy of underfunding the police, the courts, the prisons and the probation service, with fewer coppers spending more time on things that should be taken care of by social services et al, while the courts have huge backlogs and fewer facilities.
You seem to be conflating a desire for a decent justice system and lack of vigilantism with sympathy for criminals - it's not at all contradictory to want thieves dealt with in a sensible manner, yet still want people to not be allowed to dish out summary punishment. As posed by others, how would you feel if someone set on you for a crime you didn't commit?

Since this is a (mainly) UK forum I'd say that the answer to that question is plain enough.

Whataboutism is no substitute for logical debate, and "sensible manner" is a matter of opinion. Given the rates of petty, and not so petty, crime in the UK, the way it's being "dealt with" is clearly inadequate. Of course knee-jerk vigilantism is to be deprecated (the well-known pillorying of a paediatrician by a feeble-minded and orthographically-challenged British mob is proof enough of that) but what we're actually faced with is the worst of both worlds.

Physically attacking people without indisputable proof of their guilt is certainly unacceptable and the full weight of the law should be brought to bear on those who commit such acts. However, derisory "punishment" of real offenders is likewise unacceptable and frankly an insult to society as a whole.

As for "how would I feel if..", fortunately, where I live the law permits one to be sufficiently armed to persuade amateur caped crusaders that the police are a better avenue than DIY punishment.

 

[John Brown]

Honesty, moral values, principles and the fact that I wouldn't like it to happen to me.

Exactly. So is it fair to assume that someone who steals another's tools is missing one or more of those?

 

[Cobbs]

Since this is a (mainly) UK forum I'd say that the answer to that question is plain enough.

Whataboutism is no substitute for logical debate, and "sensible manner" is a matter of opinion. Given the rates of petty, and not so petty, crime in the UK, the way it's being "dealt with" is clearly inadequate. Of course knee-jerk vigilantism is to be deprecated (the well-known pillorying of a paediatrician by a feeble-minded and orthographically-challenged British mob is proof enough of that) but what we're actually faced with is the worst of both worlds.

Physically attacking people without indisputable proof of their guilt is certainly unacceptable and the full weight of the law should be brought to bear on those who commit such acts. However, derisory "punishment" of real offenders is likewise unacceptable and frankly an insult to society as a whole.

As for "how would I feel if..", fortunately, where I live the law permits one to be sufficiently armed to persuade amateur caped crusaders that the police are a better avenue than DIY punishment.

Then we agree on something - the way criminals are apprehended and dealt with is inadequate, but that comes down to funding in large part.

Re: capital punishment, there are enough well documented cases of people having wrongly been found guilty and put to death to make anyone with any compassion know it is a wrong thing. The history is littered with people who have been found guilty of murder and so on, only to have been exonerated later. I don't think we'd want to return to those days. It's bad enough to be wrongfully imprisoned - at least there's a chance to get out at some point, there's no coming back from the gallows.

 

[John Brown]

I've lost count of the amount of times I had electric shocks when I was a kid messing around with stuff, it won't kill you, it's AC so you can pull away.
If it's was DC at the same current it would be curtains for sure.

AC can kill you. It doesn't always do so. I have also had mains voltage electric shocks on more than one occasion, but Ohm's Law has so far been kind to me.

 

[John Brown]

I bet there aren't many.
I knew someone who worked in Saudi - he left his briefcase and his car keys in an open top car at the airport and they were still when he flew back three weeks later.

Statistically insignificant sample size.

 

[Spectric]

I've lost count of the amount of times I had electric shocks when I was a kid messing around with stuff, it won't kill you, it's AC so you can pull away.
If it's was DC at the same current it would be curtains for sure.

Ac or Dc can both kill, yes in some cases you may find it easier to let go of an ac source but it is not that simple, much safer to treat all electrical sources above 50 volts as dangerous and a threat to life. The circumstances of how you have made contact do play a major role, the worst situation is when one hand is grounded and the other makes electrical contact as the heart gets a bad hit. Also do not think of low voltage sources as safe, you may not get electrocuted but the current may cause severe burns, just think of the car battery.

 

[Blackswanwood]

Statistically insignificant sample size.

No, come on be fair - if we take all the people Phil has known where they've shared an anecdote he's been able to bring up to evidence his arguments across the forum it must run into thousands

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Statistically insignificant sample size.

It was an observation, not a sample.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

A sample.

Total crimes per 1000

3.88 (Saudi) Ranked 71st.

109.96 (UK) Ranked 4th. 28 times more than Saudi Arabia

Would seem to suggest something they're doing works.

 

[Crazy Dave]

Exactly. So is it fair to assume that someone who steals another's tools is missing one or more of those?

Of course, they're clearly missing some.

 

[sploo]

Remind me what the rate of recidivism is amongst those who've received capital punishment, would you? It's not a question of simply having a theoretical maximum penalty for something but rather its imposition.

"Capital punishment has a zero percent reoffence rate" is an amusing comment to make in jest. Made seriously, not so much.

As pointed out by others; serious crime exists in jurisdictions that have capital punishment => it doesn't prevent serious crime

Miscarriages of justice exist => if you have capital punishment it's a statistical certainty that at some point you'll execute the innocent *

(full) Life sentences for serious crimes mean zero chance of reoffences => no need for capital punishment in order to prevent reoffence

As also noted by others, the severity of punishment doesn't really seem to have a high degree of correlation with deterrent. It's more about the chance of being caught; and that's about adequately funding law enforcement.

(* though you can also use "Priti Patel logic"; which is where you support capital punishment except in cases of miscarriages of justice. But that one only makes sense if you're as intelligent as Priti Patel)

 

[Crazy Dave]

AC can kill you. It doesn't always do so. I have also had mains voltage electric shocks on more than one occasion, but Ohm's Law has so far been kind to me.

No it can't, if it's tried it failed on numerous occasions. I don't know anyone who has been killed by 230v AC. If it was that dangerous why does almost every home in the country have it installed?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

It might have done years ago if your electric fire fell in when you were in your bath.

 

[Crazy Dave]

Ac or Dc can both kill, yes in some cases you may find it easier to let go of an ac source but it is not that simple, much safer to treat all electrical sources above 50 volts as dangerous and a threat to life. The circumstances of how you have made contact do play a major role, the worst situation is when one hand is grounded and the other makes electrical contact as the heart gets a bad hit. Also do not think of low voltage sources as safe, you may not get electrocuted but the current may cause severe burns, just think of the car battery.

A landline has 50 volts but it's completely harmless because it's low current. It's the current/Amps that does the damage not volts.

I give up, I'm not here educate the ill informed.