Should These People Be in Football?

That's the point, though, he didn't serve his time. He served some of it...down of course to the hopeless British legal system. Had the crime taken place in the USA for example, he would still be in jail, exactly where he deserved to be.

Not often I get involved on these sorts of threads, but Lee Hughes is a detestable character who doesn't 'deserve' to be doing anything but paying full penance for his crime.

I hope Pickles plays and gives him a torrid time.

there are more helplines for prisoners released from prison than victim help lines says so much about this country doesnt it.Chuck in the human rights brigade helping them and all,jeez there laughing at us.No he shouldnt be in football,but how often has football lead the way in morales in recent years?

Didn't he leave the scene of the crime and run home? I think he was with WBA at the time earning 50K a week - whats wrong with a f***ing taxi?

and he got paid as his contract whilst in there,great isnt it

That (as I see it) fully encapsulates the situation.

It's not really in the greater interest of society as a whole for convicted criminals to be denied repatriation into that society. Repeated incarceration is futile and achieves nothing but the subject in question eventually submitting to institutionalism and thus being a pure drain on society and losing all potential to ever rise above that lowley stature.

Think about it seriously, apart from revenge; if the convict is not considered a danger of becoming a re-offender; what purpose does it serve to deny them a practical life?

I once lived through the demise of a former partner's daughter who died at an early age due to alcoholism triggered by the systematic criminal behaviour of someone towards her. It serves no purpose at all (nearly twenty years later) for that person to continue to be rejected by society from at least attempting a re-integration. Yes, we (the family) would have happily killed him at the time and would probably still seriously damage him now, but we don't know either where he is or whether he is even still alive; and that is probably for the best.

We all had to move on.

And what chance is there of someone emerging from such conditions reintegrating into society and behaving as a decent, well-adjusted human being?

You write as if a legal system could ever be infallible. Do the words ‘wrongful conviction’ mean anything to you, or do you just shrug your shoulders with indifference and say that such things are ‘a necessary evil’? If you do, maybe you should try telling that to the individuals and their families on the end of such injustice.

There’s a very good reason why civilised societies don’t impose irreversible penalities (and throwing someone in prison under the psychological conditions you describe would constitute an irreversible punishment imo): by not doing so, we protect ourselves.

The excellent (if possibly overused!) example in Robert Bolt's ‘A Man for All Seasons’ illustrates the point perfectly. Roper asks whether Moore would afford the devil the protection of the law. Moore replies that he would and asks whether Roper would cut through the law to get at the devil. Roper says he wouldn’t just cut through the law, he’d cut down every law in England to do that. To which Moore asks where he would run for protection when the devil turns on him, since he has just cut down all the laws of England.

Which describes exactly why a civilised society should behave in a decent and humane way towards its criminals. To do so not only protects society should such a person leave incarceration, but protects all within a society should any member of that society find themselves dealt with unjustly by the law.