Oxford stabber: too clever for jail?
We’re supposed to be equal before the law, said James Moore in The Independent. But are we? In a drugfuelled rage, Oxford University student Lavinia Woodward, 24, punched her boyfriend in the face, gashed his leg with a bread knife, and threw a laptop at him, followed by a glass and a jam jar. In court last week, she admitted to unlawful wounding, but her defence QC pleaded for clemency, arguing that her dreams of becoming a heart surgeon would be dashed if she were jailed. The judge, Ian Pringle, sympathised. Referencing her “extraordinary” talent, her “troubled life”, her commitment to staying off drugs and previous good character, he hinted that she might be spared a prison term, and deferred sentencing until September.
Just occasionally, I come over all angry and leftist, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. Reading about this case was one such occasion. If a man who’d knifed his girlfriend were afforded such sympathy, there would be outrage. One also wonders whether a woman who gets “stabby” while out of her box on drugs is really surgeon material. But that wasn’t the trigger for my lefty rage: it was Pringle’s suggestion that clever girls doing well at Oxford don’t belong in prison. Prison, we have to assume, is only for the impecunious, old-before-their-years losers in cheap shell suits who are more usually to be found in the criminal courts: the products of bad diets, bad habits and hard lives. It seems that if you’ve had advantages already, the court will look more kindly on you than if you live in a slum. Where is the justice in that?
It’s unjust, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. But I still think Pringle was right: universities are highly stressful places, rife with alcohol and drugs. Exposed to these pressures, some young adults will go off the rails – but they can be redeemed. Why ruin their lives by jailing them? The scandal is only that this principle is not applied more widely. Whether the defendant is an aspiring doctor or an aspiring van driver, prison is a fast route to unemployment. It’s expensive, it’s counterproductive (reoffending rates are sky-high), and most inmates are no threat to the public. “Any prison sentence is for life.” We should use alternative penalties wherever possible.