Innocent victims need to see justice

Dec 31 2009 By The Stirrer

THE Birmingham Mail can be proud of its campaign to win justice for little Cerys Edwards – the toddler left paralysed and brain damaged after being hit by a rogue motorist in Sutton Coldfield.

News that the road hog who almost killed her, Antonio Singh Boparan, served just six months in prison sparked a tsunami of public anger, and this newspaper was at the forefront of demands for a change in the law.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw has finally responded by pledging to increase the maximum sentence for dangerous driving from two years to five after the next general election.

I’m delighted that Cerys’ suffering has not been in vain – but I’m sure the editor will forgive me if I’m not ready to pop open the Champagne corks just yet.

For one thing, just because a sentence is available to judges, it doesn’t mean they’ll automatically use it.

Two years ago, for example, the Government declared that the maximum jail term for carrying a knife or offensive weapon in public would be doubled to four years.

So how many of the 50,000 criminals convicted of the offence since then have been sent down for the full term? Er, just six.

But, hey, that’s New Labour for you – soft on crime, soft on the causes of crime, but never short of a headline-grabbing stunt.

Let’s not forget that in Cerys’ case, Boparan didn’t even receive the full two-year sentence that was available to the judge.

He was sent down for just 21 months, before parole and time spent in custody were taken into account – and that’s despite driving on the wrong side of the road at more than twice the speed limit in a 30mph zone.

Whatever the political rhetoric, the truth is that guidelines are issued to our supposedly independent judiciary discouraging them from passing long jail sentences, because there simply aren’t enough cells to hold them all.

The answer may be to build more prisons or, alternatively, become more selective with those we choose to lock up – but it can never be to compromise on stiff penalties for the most serious offenders.

They must be punished with a long stretch inside.

That’s the least we owe to Cerys Edwards and thousands more like her, who have become innocent victims of crime.