Does Justice Travel?
I used to fly on Pan Am over Lockerbie on business so I am very conscious that I could have been among those whose lives were cut short on 21 December 1988. Following the disaster, the company for which I was working immediately decided to swap carriers to Lufthansa to reduce the already very low risk attached to travelling via Pan Am or British Airways.
I do not know about your thoughts, but following the recent events in Scotland I have been struck by the difference in view between the Americans and British Lockerbie bombing groups.
Then I remembered the fate of one Mr Wilkerson of Los Angeles, who was found guilty of stealing a pair of socks, valued at £1∙50, in 1995. Because it was his third offence – he had committed two earlier offences in 1989 – he was sent down for life with a minimum of 25 years. He is still in prison today.
Set in such a context, if a legal system is comfortable in incarcerating someone for over twenty five years for half-inching a pair of socks it would seem that a life sentence could not be long enough for someone found guilty of killing 270 people at one time – so, in the American way of thinking, he should never be let out what ever the circumstances.
The time is perhaps long overdue for the Americans to review the case of Mr Wilkerson and the tens of thousands of people like him locked up for trivial offences. However, we best not point out what we might think wrong about other countries’ justice systems. Let us hope they see the error of their ways by themselves – and that they don’t take too long about it.
Previous article: We must not fool ourselves into relying on technofixes (Wednesday, 12th August, 2009)
Comments
Off topic
Sorry Andrew, however reasonable and considered this comment is, it has absolutely nothing to do with environmentally considerate transport. As such this is the wrong forum for airing these views.
To blog or not to blog
We have a debate here about what I should write about - the range of topics and the style. My instincts are to keep within rather tight guidelines. I am not a natural blogger - I do not have strong urges to tell the world what I am doing, thinking or feeling. I am a rather stoical private person.
However, those around me tell me that it is because I look at the world through a different prism from most people that my views to add to the general debate. Often this means raising an issue which is not directly considered in the mainstream of our discipline - that of environmental transport.
There was a link in my mind with this entry but the link did not make it into the final draft. Therefore the reader could not have seen it.
Having said that, as long as such items, even if totally remote from the main theme, are infrequent I think they add rather than detract from the process. So now you'll have to wait till later to read my thoughts on the impact that independence had on Latvian agriculture.