Only in the Nanny State of Britain: when the victim is the one jailed and not the criminal

Has the British court system lost its bloody mind in its everlasting quest to impose its Nanny State mentality on everyone? That’s the only reason I can come up with to explain how and why it could come up with this egregious ruling. A man who beat up a burglar who robbed his house whilst threatening him and his family at knifepoint has been sentenced to 2½ years in jail (his brother, who helped him capture the burglar, received an even harsher sentence as he had not “faced as much provocation”). The clincher? The burglar, whose injuries appeared to have made him sympathetic to the judge, got off without any jail at all.

Munir Hussain, 53, and his family were tied up and told to lie on the floor by career criminal Waled Salem, who burst into his home with two other masked men.

Mr Hussain escaped and attacked Salem with a metal pole and a cricket bat. But yesterday it was the businessman who was starting a prison sentence for his 'very violent revenge'.

Jailing him, Judge John Reddihough said some members of the public would think that 56-year-old Salem 'deserved what happened to him' and that Mr Hussain 'should not have been prosecuted'.

But had he spared Mr Hussain jail, the judge said, the 'rule of law' would collapse.

He said: 'If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting the criminal justice system take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.'

Salem, who has previous convictions, has already been given a non-custodial sentence despite carrying out what the judge called a 'serious and wicked' attack.

Reddibough’s reasoning is just bogus. First of all, the “rule of law” wouldn’t collapse from the simple and single act of letting a man who defended his home and family, and took out his anger on the man who fully deserved it, avoid jail. That’s just stupid. Hussain isn’t a psychotic nut who went on a vigilante-esque rampage, bashing people’s skulls in at a whim. He simply defended his and his family’s lives along with his home. Hardly a threat to civilized society as we know it.

I’m not congratulating Hussain for his actions. I’m just saying that there needs to be more proper perspective and proportion between crimes and their punishments. Sending the victim to jail for years while the actual criminal gets off just because he was given some stitches and bruising, is just ridiculous.

(via Fark.com)