One rule for the rich?

[LeMarchand]

http://www.independen...-in-riot-2358791.html

Rich and caught with £thousands of looted gear in your car and you get tagged.

Take a look at some of the other sentences passed out:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14595102

[emmie]

That's as may be, many of those caught had previous, so if she is a first time offender, then that's a likely outcome. If she had been an habitual offender, she would i'm sure have gone to prison. I am not defending her or indeed anyone, and think that she should be made to do community service, if she hasn't already.

[LeMarchand]

Sorry - I was so incensed that I didn't read the article properly - she has yet to be sentenced. Still, unlike many others, she is still at large and - let's face it - unless we all start making our anger felt is probably only going to get a slap on the wrist.

Some of those in the second link had no previous, by the way...

[Hymie]

More Private Eye Number Crunching (from the current issue)

9 Months’ prison sentence for £14,000 parliamentary expense fraud from which Lord Hanningfield has been released after 9 weeks, maintaining at trail that ‘I did nothing wrong’.

6 Months’ prison sentence which Nicholas Robinson received for £3.50 bottled water theft during the London riots, despite telling the court he was ‘ashamed of his actions’.

[sandyRoe]

She's been tagged until her trial next month. It's likely she'll get a custodial sentence then.
The appeals of those already sentences should be coming up soon. I believe they were too severe in a lot of cases.

[sandyRoe]

Assuming, of course, that she's convicted.^^^

[naomi24]

I think you'll find that plenty of poorer people escape justice almost completely. How many thugs are let off with, at worse, an ASBO?

Hymie, the government said that people who took part in the riots would receive harsh sentences. That's not to say those who fiddled expenses shouldn't be punished, but the riots have been made a separate issue.

[sandyRoe]

Is it not a matter for the courts rather than the government what length of sentences are handed down?