Life really should mean a life inside
THE last person to be hanged in this country was strung up in 1964. Capital punishment was abolished a year later. Those who unsuccessfully argued for its retention were partly mollified by the absolute assurance that, in the case of murder, “life would mean life” and that most killers would die in jail.
It was a false promise. Half a century on there is almost no such thing as a “full life tariff”. Most murderers spend a handful of years inside before being allowed out “on licence”. Some go on to kill again.
In the week that the justice minister called for most sentences of less than a year to be axed to cut the jail population I found myself wondering about jail terms at the other end of the scale. How horrible, how savage, how utterly depraved does a murder have to be to merit its perpetrator being locked up for life?
Let’s take this year’s case of Joshua Stimpson, a repulsive man who relentlessly stalked his ex-girlfriend, terrifying her, before pouncing on her as she sat in her WE flew BA from Heathrow to Nice this week. I really enjoy buying duty-free scent and make-up on a plane; so much easier than schlepping down the high street.
So I brought my little list and delved into the seat pocket for a duty-free mag as soon as we boarded the plane.
But no dice. No enticing glossy publication offering Jo Malone cologne; Bobbi Brown make-up; or Yves St Laurent Touche Eclat to be found.
A friendly air steward offered to find one for me but came back crestfallen. It was a new type of aeroplane, he explained, and BA has packed so many extra seats into it that there’s hardly any galley space left. So duty free had to go.
The food on BA’s short haul flights is now almost nonexistent. Tiny tasteless sandwiches, or something from a limited M&S snack menu. They even manage to run out of that half the time.
Do you remember when flying was a treat, a holiday luxury much looked forward to? I do. Just. Nowadays it’s an ordeal. We stopped driving to France a couple of years ago. I loved getting the Dover-Calais ferry, so spacious and comfy. But the two-day drive to Nice began to get us down so we decided to fly.
Next year we’re thinking we might go back to the Channel crossing road-trip. Longer but far less frustrating. parked car, stabbing her 75 times. Molly McLaren was a sweet, happy young woman of just 23 when her life was horribly cut short.
Poor, poor girl. Her poor, poor parents, lives devastated by Stimpson’s grotesque, selfindulgent evil.
Although Stimpson was given a life sentence with the recommendation that he serve a minimum of 26 years before becoming eligible for parole, he is 25 and could be allowed his freedom aged 51. Is that justice? No. Fifty years ago he would have been hanged and no one would have mourned him.
And how many other murderers have been given far shorter sentences?
I’m not calling for the return of the death penalty – too many wrongly convicted people were executed – but brutal murderers such as Stimpson should pay for their crimes by spending the rest of their lives in jail.
Life, as we were earnestly promised in 1965, should mean life. Due punishment, due deterrent.