More crime around now

Life sentences can mean as little as four years in some cases and the national average is nearer six or seven years in reality.

We are told our prisons are rife with drugs and reoffending sits at something like 70 per cent.

We have been inundated with foreign nationals who, having come from war torn vicious towns and cities, see violence as the norm; Drug dealers wave guns around like it’s the O.K. Corral and seldom do we see a bobby on our streets. Consecutive governments have released killers early, on the basis our prisons are full and yet the murder rate rises.

Today’s world is more violent than it has been for decades: radicals kill for religion and tolerant education seems to be failing. In 1964 the UK held its last hanging. The number of murders that year stood at just over 290, rising virtually every year since capital punishment was abolished.

The number of murders this year is likely to top 600. Some may say it’s since the ‘rope’ and the ‘cat o’nine tails’ were removed. Others may blame the lack of police on our streets as a visible deterrent.

I have heard poor education, broken homes and a poor upbringing blamed, but there have always been these problems in society for as long as anyone can recall.

Has the number of murders increased with the higher level of immigration or is it simply that prison, no matter how upsetting it is to go to prison, is not hard labour anymore, with a life of drugs, pool tables, Sky TV and the rest of it.

Drugs we are told plays a major part in a large number of murders, as does alchohol, and whilst each individual case will have its own ingredients one can’t help but feel that all the aforementioned is why it’s rising so worryingly. Maybe today’s society just doesn’t value life as we used to. What the answer is who knows?

Chloe Harrison, West Bromwich