what is the point in banging up up for more than 12 months?

He'll be in an open prison, they'll let him out with a tag as soon as they can, and he'll only serve half the sentence anyway.

Under that sort of regime, anything more than a year is a completeley pointless waste of finite resources.

Jail time has a good deterrent effect but I fail to see why an extra 6 or 12 months (when you're probably going to be out on license by that point) is going to be the extra bit of time that makes people think 'oooh, I'd best never conspire to hack a mobile phone". The longer you put him away for, the more time & material available to him to write a sodding book and make a bit of money out of it on his release (see: Aitken).

If money was no object, then yes, bang him up for the full 2 years. But it isn't.

On the Dowler thing, I don't supose he told Mulcare to delete answer phone messages - so it seems harsh to want to lock him up for 3 (!) years because of that when the bloke who did the deleting of the voicemails goit 6 months suspended - ie, didn't actually go to jail.

References to him being 'Cameron's lickspittle' suggest your desire to see him in prison has more than a little politcal bias to it.

Posted By: CWC, Jul 4, 13:59:30