Official figures reveal that last year more than 65,000 criminals escaped custody for serious offences when they had a criminal record of more than TEN convictions.No doubt, it was convincingly explained in court how they would respond so much better to a community penalty than custody.
When you have a minimum of TEN convictions, just how many times will you already have undergone: CROs, CPOs, ASBOs, DTTOs and any other set of initials which ends in 'O' that you can think of?
What the published figures do not state is how many of these 65,000 are yet to make their first trip to jail. In my experience on the Bench - that figure could be extremely high.
Stop to consider just how much social misery these relatively unpunished felons will have wreaked in their communities.
