Taxi driver who killed cyclist and blamed fatal crash on being "blinded by sun" gets six-month suspended sentence

Rendel Harris wrote:

Quote:

"...it is certain that no sentence the court can impose would be able to compensate for his life at all," the judge said

Of course there is no level of sentence available that could compensate for the taking of another person's life, in what way is that an excuse for the imposing of risibly lenient sentences for doing so?

There's a logical conundrum in both what the judge said/did and in your response. Your remarks beg the question: what "level of sentence" could, then, compensate in this and similar cases if, as you both seem to imply, none of the current sentences are of any utility?

As we know, gaol does the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do, producing inmates even more disaffected and uncivilised than when they went in, often re-offending to a worse degree when released - and costing taxpayers a huge amount of money both during gaol time and after release. The "best" you can say for such puinishments is that they offer revenge, a thing of no real utility to anyone at all, not even victims and their families, in truth.

"Compensate" is perhaps the central concept worth exploring. Compensation may never be enough but it could at least be used as the nexus of punishments to reduce as many consequential harms of such events as is practical; and perhaps obtain some benefits.

A sentence of years devoting all the perpetrator's time and effort to financial recompense to a victim or their family, perhaps? That time and effort made via work within a milieau wherein the criminal gains a sense of empathy/sympathy for others along with a reattachment and sense of belonging to / affection for a community and the society containing it.

Revenge of the hang-'em-high kind is a natural human response but one that's worthless in changing behaviours or reducing grief.

But perhaps you have no confidence in the notion of redemption?

I agree on the ineffectiveness of prison in many instances with regards recindivism. But a one year revocation of a driving license is an insult. Kill someone through gross and reckless incompetence should mean you can't drive for a long, long time. And never as a form of employment.

More to the point - how will we know they're not driving (detection rates are - like most road policing - very, very low)?

If they do drive before their ban has finished, are they actually recalled to prison to serve their (*checks notes*) 6 month sentence (if we even bother with such short ones currently...)?  Or are they solemnly told "you will not do this again, or we will be forced to tell you not to do it again, again"?

You don't half make some assumptions about what other people have said sometimes. I didn't say that I wanted the driver to go to prison, however the judge could have sent a signal by imposing a longer suspended sentence, making the suspended sentence period longer, imposing a longer period of unpaid work and a much longer driving ban. That's not actually calling for "revenge of the hang-em-high kind", it's calling for killing people with motorcars to be treated as a serious offence rather than something, at this sentencing level, roughly equivalent to a shoplifting spree.

Not sure how all of that follows.

As has been said many, many times on here, if you want to kill someone then do it with a car. Traffic offences involving a KSI are treated much lighter than other offences because there is an acceptance of a level of collaterlal damage that doesn't occur in other walks of life.

I don't see a stiff sentence and proper ban as revenge, but as a deterent and an demonstration that driving needs to be taken seriously and involves a high level of concentration.

Quote:

"...it is certain that no sentence the court can impose would be able to compensate for his life at all," the judge said

And yet the court also doesn't seem to even want to try