Letter: Victims of crime seek tough justice
Over the past few months the Shropshire Star has published the verdicts on court cases concerning fraud and theft of money from elderly people with the latest cases showing how unfair the legal system is when it comes to sentencing the criminals.
After these deplorable crimes against vulnerable people the courts seem to think that because these lowlifes have spent all the money they fraudulently obtained from their victims that they should have no financial responsibility to the people whose lives and health have been so traumatised by what has happened to them. These elderly people that have worked all their lives and planned for old age have had to accept that the criminals have won again and that their lives have changed forever.
How fair is it that a court can sentence a criminal to four years imprisonment and that that sentence will be reduced by two thirds with the prisoner being released on licence while their victims have been sentenced to a life of fear and financial hardship?
Criminals who steal from elderly people should be made to have to sell every asset they own and after release from prison, after serving the full sentence, they should be made to pay money every month to their victims.
If they break their parole or suspended sentence conditions they should be sent straight back to prison, not what's been happening recently with the courts being soft and the criminals just having a slap on their wrist and walking out of the courts laughing.
It's time the victims started to got justice in our courts.
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