Capital punishment the way to put a stop to violent offending

YET again another killing in the London area. However, it’s not only London that is falling foul of murders these days, it seems it’s slowly but surely becoming an epidemic nationwide.

In my opinion, and many people I’ve spoken to, now is the time to reinstate capital punishment for murder, with harsher sentences for manslaughter and MUCH harsher sentences for armed robbery and robbery with violence.

We keep hearing that the reason the courts are so lenient on criminal acts, such as car theft burglary, muggings, the list goes on, is because there aren’t enough spaces in prison.

My answer to that is, utilise one of our uninhabited islands off our coast for a new top security prison and make inmates, under armed guard, build it themselves. In the seventies a murder would have made the front pages of the newspapers and had a week’s coverage on TV as they were so uncommon but now we seem to hear of one every week. Up until the late fifties murder, the killing of a police officer, robbery with violence and armed robbery nearly all carried the death penalty or at least a life sentence of twenty-five years.

I know that some people think it barbaric to put another human being to death but those who commit such crimes have no sympathy with their victims or the suffering caused to others and therefore deserve no sympathy either.

I have just learned of an attack on a woman in Ireland by a young man using an electric drill on her head. I’m informed by the person relating this to me that the perpetrator of this horrendous act has been charged with nothing more than GBH. If this wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable. I wonder what the attitudes of others are.

John Rowley, Earl Shilton.