It's a crime

[undyingking]

I'm a bit puzzled by one aspect of this foreign criminals business that's been in the news lately. Clearly it's pretty incompetent to not know what on earth is going on with them, and to not be able to deport those whom the judge has said should be deported. But the press has been dwelling not on that but instead on the horror of VIOLENT FOREIGN THUGS STALK THE STREETS -- and not just the tabloids. What I don't understand is, given that there are thousands of criminals wandering around having served their sentence and been let out -- that being the nature of sentences -- why is it so much worse that some of them are foreign? Why should they be deported after release, if the judge thought that the sentence handed down was sufficient punishment for their crime? If only 5 out of 1000+ have reoffended, that sounds like their recidivism rate is actually less than the native population. Or is the subtext that really people aren't happy about anyone who's committed an offence ever being let out of jail?

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Or is the subtext that really people aren't happy about anyone who's committed an offence ever being let out of jail?

This is indeed the case, I'm sure. Except that each individual makes exceptions in the case of any friends or family who may have done time for whatever reason.

Add to this the fact that there are plenty of people who'd like to deport all foreigners and this simply provides a more acceptable excuse...

each individual makes exceptions

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

There seems to be a really quite fundamental human limitation in generalizing from particulars in this way -- same sort of thing seen when people rave about how wonderful their local hospital is, yet insist that the NHS as a whole is performing terribly.