The Most Heinous Legal Act Since Our Previous Moral Panic

An independent body, whose sale to G4S will doubtless only be hastened by this indiscretion, has decided that a man should be released from prison. He was sentenced to a minimum of thirty years for the murder of two police officers; he has served that minimum and a further eighteen years, and is now seventy-eight years old and quite probably less dangerous to society than certain fine young men doing a wonderful job under difficult circumstances. Nevertheless, Bernard Hogan-Howitzer, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club, is unhappy; the chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales is appalled; the Labour MP for Dudley North has come over all theological; the mad old cat lady in the Home Office has pledged to enshrine in legislation the idea that the life of a police officer matters more than the life of a civilian; and the London Haystack has decreed that Londoners shall be sickened. Personally I am not sickened, although I do find the idea that the prison service is purely for warehousing a little distasteful; but then I am not a real Londoner, only an immigrant.