Wednesday 17 August 2011

Riot reaction

This is my last blog before I take a summer break and I will try and keep it short and sweet. 
The idea of making people, who were convicted of rioting, homeless is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in the whole 'riots' debate.  In fact when I first heard it I thought it was a joke.  There is nothing about it that makes any sense to me.  So let me run the scenario...

If someone has been convicted of being involved in the riot they are being punished by the courts and the sentences given out in the last week appear to be strong enough to provide a deterrent. (Now is not the time to discuss the value of the judicial system that sends a mother of two to prison for 5 months for handling a stolen pair of shorts! I'll save that for another day)  So if councils then evict that immediately becomes an additional punishment.  Where does the additional punishments stop, perhaps if you keep rolling out the punishments you can stop benefits, stop health provision, stop education.

And if I run the scenario of eviction, immediately people who were not involved in the riots will be evicted which seems hugely unfair.  It would cause huge disruption to an already massive challenge for inner city areas.  Because immediately the Council would be under pressure to assess the family for housing under the homelessness Act.  And many charities and other community agencies would be called upon to provide help when there are already too many homeless and vulnerable people needing help.  This plan simply will make things a lot worse.

Normally I would say that the courts would never sanction anything like this.  However the events of the last week have shown in a time when politicians are reacting strongly some normal things have been ignored. 

The answer to restoring a broken society is to help people build self respect, understanding the value of working and for all people to respect authority.  This is not achieved by seeing how much can be stripped away from people!

 

     

No comments:

Followers