Justice for Ian Huntley

Over here, Ewar makes a strong case against mob rule (careful Ewar, you're sounding liberal), so I thought I'd add my pennorth.

Ian Huntley murdered two children. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, which sounds fair enough to me.

In prison, he was badly injured in an attack by another prisoner (now a folk hero on Facebook, as Ewar explains) and intends to sue the prison authorities for endangering him. The story's been all over the worst tabloids this week.

Good.

Huntley's bad and/or mad. That's clear enough from his crime. That doesn't mean that he isn't a human being with all the rights that accrue. He's paying his debt to society. You don't lose your fundamental right to safety because you're a criminal. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that he could have £100,000 in the bank in compensation for his injuries, but that's tough. He shouldn't have been attacked, and the prison service shouldn't create the conditions in which violent individuals can launch such attacks.

Justice is administered by the state, and blindly (that's the theory anyway, though women, for example, are imprisoned for offences men don't get locked up for, amongst other problems). It doesn't matter what Huntley's done when it comes to acting on crimes committed against him. If we remove the rights of the worst members of society, that undermines the social values that keep society on an even keel.

Personally, I'd like to see NHS care denied to anyone who crashes their car while using a mobile phone or not wearing a seat belt (my taxes, your stupidity), but I know that that's a slippery slope in which the loudest voices (Tory Scum and their tabloid friends) will institute a reign of terror. Before long you'd get AIDS treatment restricted to blood transfusion victims, or benefits doled out only to the 'deserving' poor. Oh hang on, that's already happening…