£1 million upgrade touted for popular cycling path, including CCTV cameras to tackle "wild west" bikejackings that saw cyclists ditch route and feel "safer between buses and cars"

...Flogging and hanging is the only language they understand?

Anyway, I think you'll find without a camera there will likely be no arrests, certainly no convictions and no jail.   And if this is "feral kids" then jail options may be limited, and "worrying about consequences beforehand" may be lacking.  Unfortunately there may need to be a lot more needs done than Dickson of Dock Green around a few times a day to address an issue of youths out of control.  Or restore confidence to cyclists here.

You know its true. I'm glad. Camera's, best wishes and hugs won't solve these problems. Actual punishment will, suffering will. Its all we humans really understand. A few lashes would go a long way, more than we realise. Dads used to take on this burden with their belts; something else I suspect these feral lot are missing. Its a sad situation, sincerly it is.

In the early 19th-century a huge range of draconian punishments was available and enthusiastically employed, ranging from the birch, the treadmill and the cat o' nine tails right up to transportation and public execution for the most minor crimes. Did this bring an end to crime? Did it hell. Nobody commits a crime thinking that they are going to get caught for it so to a great extent the level of punishment is irrelevant. What finally brought the crime rate down in Victorian times was better housing, better education, more protection for workers and increased social provision (albeit very basic as it seems to us now), not hanging and flogging, however disturbingly exciting you appear to find the prospect.

alexuk wrote:

Police need to police. Courts need to convict. Jail needs to mean jail. A camera won't stop the bali-wearing feral kids of Bristol. Stern, no-nonsense justice will.

It won't. Never has and never will.  Criminals act in two ways: impulsively, where emotion of the moment overcomes all other considerations; with the assumption that they won't be caught as they believe that they're cleverer than even the best and most attentive policeman.

What would work is the reduction in the various impulses and compulsions to commit crime. That takes a vast socio-economic change in which there are far less disaffected, demoralised and otherwise unfettered minds ready, willing and able to ignore consideration of others, since nobody considers their dismal circumstances.

Behold. This is why crime is rampant in our society. Everyone makes excuses for the criminals. Surley the social experient we've endured over the past few decades has proven that the soft-touch, love-in approach, does not work? Punishment is the most effective form deterrant. Hard punishment, even more so. Anything else is wishful thinking, which you will soon abandon when the ones you love are victims of these un-punished criminals.

There is a plethora of research available that demonstrates that harsher sentencing has no positive effect on crime levels, indeed it may even have a deleterious influence as the longer a sentence served the greater the likelihood of recidivism. So it's not a "soft touch love in approach" to search for alternatives to harsher punishments, it is simply applying research-based evidence to the problem rather than pandering to the frothingly violent instincts of people who appear to get off on the idea that fathers should beat their children with belts.

Ah, but anything that sounds like "making excuses for criminals" is going to trigger the "right-thinking folk" (and in fact many of us).  The desire for "moral desert" is deep-seated in humans.  Albeit that's mitigated by ignoring our own misdeeds and excusing our friends'.

Feelings over thought etc.

This is correct, if we're going to invest in the criminal justice system we should do so on catching people and processing them through the system quickly, not building more gaols, stocks or gallows.

alexuk wrote:

This is why crime is rampant

Not sure what you mean by rampant but many serious crimes are much less rampant than a few decades ago. For all sorts of reasons.
NB stats are based on surveying the general population about their experience of crime, not police-recorded crimes.

What about all the computer misuse?  Stop with the downloading already!