Government not always to blame
MR D V Palmer (The Sentinel, September 27), referring to the murder of two female police officers in Manchester, asked when is this Government going to 'do something' about murder in the UK?
He wants them to 'get their finger out and change the law'.
Change the law to what? Mr Palmer wants 'life imprisonment' to mean exactly that. Simple, isn't it, until you realise murder can take all sorts of forms.
There can be all sorts of extenuating circumstances, borderline cases, manslaughter, insanity, etc.
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Even during the period when capital punishment was the automatic penalty for all murder (up to 1957) only 10 to 15 per cent of murderers were actually hanged.
The rest got off, for all manner of reasons. And those that got off did not spend the rest of their lives in jail either.
If hanging were brought back a far lower percentage of those convicted would end up on the gallows.
As for 'life meaning life', there are a few for who this is literally true.
So what exactly does Mr Palmer mean when he utters the worn out phrase about 'doing something about it'?
C D ALLAN Alsager
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