How should we punish reckless, dangerous behaviour?

[spindrift]

Calm down

 

Re-read the whole previous page!

 

Nobody has defended the extinguisher lobber, you made that up.

[spooky3]

Nobody has defended the extinguisher lobber, you made that up.

 

Oh shut up spindrift, read the posts, i've not made anything up, other people can read too and will see you being as daft as normal!

 

NB: I probably won't be responding to your daft lies any more!

[spindrift]

Oh shut up spindrift, read the posts, i've not made anything up, other people can read too and will see you being as daft as normal!

 

NB: I probably won't be responding to your daft lies any more!

 

Fine, instead of repeatedly making the claim perhaps you can show me where anyone defended the lobber?

 

here's a clue, you can't.

 

You made it up.

[Mel's Mum]

Do you punish the act or the result?

 

the act

 

Is throwing a fire extinguisher off a roof really different to getting behind the wheel of a car whilst drunk?

 

.

 

its not any different at all.

 

Whether we agree with it or not, the law takes a hindsight approach with recklessness and punishes in view of what the "likely" outcome would have been and not the actual outcome.

[spindrift]

its not any different at all.

 

Whether we agree with it or not, the law takes a hindsight approach with recklessness and punishes in view of what the "likely" outcome would have been and not the actual outcome.

 

Of course, that's beyond doubt, and, in my opinion, utterly indefensible.

[esme]

Mod Note

 

OK, that's long enough I reckon stop taking swipes at each other or the thread will be closed permanently

[mj.scuba]

Children with speed cameras pull over the Mayor

 

Published Date: 21 January 2011

By Jeni Harvey

CHILDREN helping police catch speeding motorists in Doncaster were surprised to pull over the town's mayor, Peter Davies.

 

 

The English Democrat elected mayor was caught driving over the 30mph speed limit by pupils from Intake Primary School, who were assisting police officers monitoring drivers' speeds on Shaftesbury Avenue, close to the school building.

 

Mayor Davies yesterday questioned the validity of the pupils' exercise.

 

He added: "I do not condone speeding and fully accept that I was driving at 33mph in a 30mph zone, slightly above the limit.

 

"I am pleased this has been brought to my attention and will be more careful in future.

 

"Whilst I fully support the police in managing the speeds on our roads I do not support children being out of school for this sort of activity.

 

"Road safety can be delivered in the classroom alongside English and maths and schools should be concentrating on these basics."

 

A spokesman for South Yorkshire Police confirmed that Mayor Davies was not fined or given points on his licence following the incident, but was "spoken to" by officers.

 

The speed check was taking place as part of a "Neighbourhood Alliance" project which has got under way in the Intake area of Doncaster.

 

Similar initiatives regularly take place across the country and, in some cases, the schoolchildren design anti-speeding posters to be handed out to those drivers caught exceeding the limit.

[Eater Sundae]

Well I managed to read about 2/3 of the OP but I think I get the drift of your concerns. To the OP: you arent too far off the mark with your risk assessment theory on how the law works already. When recklessness is being considered' date=' it all comes down to the [i']mens rea[/i] (which I think someone has already mentioned on this thread) and this is usually worked out on hindsight.

 

The law tends to work on the intention at the time of commission of the offence and how a reasonable person would view the actions. To complicate matters further, the law defines recklessness in 2 categories: Caldwell recklessness and Cunningham recklessness (taken from the cases where the principles became settled law: R v Caldwell 1982 and R v Cunningham 1957 respectively.

 

The arguments and decisions used in these cases which provide the points of law still in force are a favourite topic for law degree coursework so for that reason I wont explain in full or my post will end up being 2,500 words! By way of example and using two particular examples from this thread: in the boy with the extinguisher case, this would be Caldwell recklessness as the theory is that a reasonable person would know that throwing a heavy object from a height into a crowd of people may cause injury or damage. In the taxi driver case, this would be Cunningham recklessness as driving a vehicle without insurance (although dishonest) does not often lead to injury or damage.

 

There are many good books on criminal law which all begin by looking at mens rea and can explain these points a thousand times better than me but I would just say that however much we may disagree with the outcome of a case that there are always many points of settled law which have been pondered carefully in coming to the decision.

 

In my OP, I'd convinced myself that the justice system generally did try to assess the crime based on the intent at the time. But I felt that this was not explained to the public, who often expected a much higher sentence if someone was killed. However, I'd forgotten about the man who crashed onto the train track (see HeadingNorth's post No 33), which seems to be a bit more of a "crowd pleasing" sort of punishment.

[Eater Sundae]

To the OP - your post was well written and I did manage to get about a third of the way before I gave up - it was just too dense a load of reading for to take onboard at once. The run of the thread suggests others did the same and aare having a related but different discussion. Maybe you could try and summarise your main points and repost as it looks like a potentially interesting discussion.

 

I will probably try again, as you suggest. Howewver, part of what I had hoped to do was consider both driving actions and non-driving actions and consider their similarities and differences, which I'd probably lose.