When visiting a local town today I was infuriated to see a well known thug walking the streets. He was jailed last year for 3 and a half years for the supply of Class A drugs. Obviously he has only served around half of his sentence.
He has many previous convictions including for assault, as well as being involved in an well-publicised attack on a foreign tourist that left him permanently disabled.
I’ve also reported him for a crime committed against myself, though nothing as serious as assault.
I'm sorry to hear this. I've not been the victim of anything like this so don't have first-hand experience of it, but I can imagine it's hard seeing them walk around freely in your local area.
Rather than turn this into a rant about our poor criminal justice system, I’m really curious to know if for individuals such as this who are repeat offenders, especially for violent and drug related crimes, there are ever efforts to restrict where they can go
Yes, there are. Some criminals are given prohibition orders preventing them from entering certain areas. Obviously though, without a vast facial recognition camera rollout, detecting this is quite hard. You might get lucky if a local bobby spots them and recognises them but this is, on the whole, unlikely. I don't recognise my lobby bobbies, so the odds of them recognising me are nil, though I don't have a criminal record they'd have to recognise me for.
and if there are ever processes in place to make them move away from an area?
Yes. I grew up on a bit of a surreal social housing estate, of just a couple of dozen houses. One house had gypsies with people living in caravans on the driveway (they were sound by the way, as long as you were sound with them - when my mum came out of hospital they came round and offered to do gardening for her for free), two houses of drug dealers (one of whom was a grower), tax evading taxi drivers, a cross-dresser who has recently been arrested after being subjected to one of those paedophile hunter stings, a lesbian couple who would beat each other up just so they could legitimately call 999 because they both had an emergency services fetish, etc.
Anyway, one guy on our street collected knives. He held his wife up with one of these large knives one day, and we had armed police surrounding the house, who were somewhat distracted by our cat using the front door knocker on our door to be let in. He was imprisoned, got out, and they were still together. Within a year or so he'd ordered a police truncheon online and beaten a bloke up in the pub with it. For this, he was banned from the whole county. He was forced to move many miles away from the area. Sadly, the wife went with him, but appreciate it's difficult for domestic abuse victims to escape.
More famously, Kevin Booth of Altnabreac fame has an order which prohibits him from leaving the UK. I can't remember if there's a time limit on it or not, but if not, it's effectively an indefinite travel ban. He also has to notify Police Scotland if he plans to hire any female to work at his house.
The courts have many options at their disposal. I don't believe they always use them effectively, but at the same time they are trying to balance the opportunity for rehabilitation with punishment. The guy that you're describing sounds like rehabilitation is being lost on him, and he should be moved away from the area with the hope that disconnecting him from his usual contacts and crime opportunities may give him a chance at going straight, or at least straighter.
I don’t think I agree that offenders like this should be able to be free to stay in the town where they have committed serious crimes. It’s really not fair on victims of such horrible people.
Agreed. And often offenders will voluntarily move away to make a 'clean break' and avoid the aggro associated with people protesting their presence etc. I think the justice system could work better in enforcing this for those persistent offenders who still try and return to the place they caused their trouble.
