Yesterday's Guardian gave half a page yesterday to the teenager who will be serving 20 years in jail for running down a policeman with a stolen pickup while full of cannabis. It was not his first offence involving stolen vehicles.
From where I moved to the professional criminals who got, say, five years in jail for a crime involving months of careful planning and a great deal of money. With my thought being that while the second crime did not involve people getting hurt, let alone killed, it did involve a good deal more malice aforethought. These were professional criminals were going about what to them was their ordinary business, with no thought at all for the damage they might do to the lives of their victims. They were evil in a way that the teenager was not. So I think that the large difference between the two sentences is too much, is not right.
Other considerations include the likelihood that the teenager came from a bad background - the Guardian gives no clues on that point - and that he will probably emerge from prison worse than when he went in - if not completely broken. Not to mention the huge expense of keeping him there all that time.
Google did not offer any more complete record of the hearing at Liverpool, beyond turning up an unhelpful reminder about a computer system with which I was once acquainted at reference 1. Justice being seen to be done does not seem to extend to people who have the time to read a hearing transcript but not the time to attend the hearing itself - even in this age of the government computer. Perhaps a lawyer would know where to look.
Reference 1: http://xhibit.justice.gov.uk/xhibit/liverpool.htm.
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