Sack the Victims Commissioner and come clean on Jonathan Aitken's role in the CJS!

Sack the Victims Commissioner and come clean on Jonathan Aitken's role in the CJS!

I get sick of hearing "What about the victims?"! FFS, change the record! Personally, I think that the appointment of Louise Casey as the Victims Commissioner is a waste of taxpayers money. It is only natural that members of the public are going to be upset at becoming victims of crime. The problem is that they feel it adds insult to injury if the CJS does not punish offenders in a way that suits the victims. The whole purpose of removing the power to punish from victims to State inflicted sanctions, is to instill dispassion into the process.

I see no point in a court imposing financial penalities upon criminals who cannot afford to pay the fines. Even the State cannot get blood out of a stone! What part of can't pay, won't pay doesn't Louise Casey understand? "Why fine enforcement is so poorly done, I still do not understand. Fines are written off and not paid". Ever since I first started going through the CJS unpaid fines have been quashed. The madness is in imposing them and then quashing them. Why impose them in the first place? Perhaps, a suitable alternative punishment should be instituted instead for those who have no means to pay?

Tony Blair's "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" only ever addressed the first part and failed to tackle the causes. I see no sense in getting an offender to wear a bright orange Community Payback jacket, whilst he cleans up graffiti which he most probably did not inflict upon the community in the first place! This only creates another victim! Besides, the whole community work scheme has become discredited when the ConDems insisted that the unemployed should also be engaged in community work. It is not a crime to be unemployed!

If the ConDems wish to be taken seriously on reforms of the CJS, then they need to be transparent about following policy designed by disgraced former Tory minister Jonathan Aitken.