The over-riding responsibility of the government of any civilized country must surely be to care for its citizens, those who, by the democratic process, elected it to power. Why, then, I am moved to wonder, have governments of this country repeatedly, and increasingly, not only failed but wantonly neglected and blatantly refused to do so? Such a sweeping condemnation demands explanation, and I offer such now.

A person who commits an act of sexual abuse (or indeed any form of violence) on a child (or indeed on an adult) does so for one of two reasons; that person is mentally deranged, and thus cannot prevent himself from so doing, or that person is inherently evil and does so by choice. Society's only valid responses are, for the former, indefinite confinement to an institution for the criminally insane, and, for the latter, indefinite confinement to an institution for the criminal. In either case, it is incumbent upon Government to remove permanently the risk to its citizens, and such can only be achieved by these means (or by the ultimate sanction, which will be considered later). The suggestion that the person in the former example is ill rather than wilful may well be true, but is irrelevant. The interests of society can only be served by removing that person from society. The fundamental difference between the attitudes to these two examples will be that in the former case it will be borne in mind that the person is sick, whereas the latter perpetrator will be treated as an offender, which is to say that he will be punished.

Punishment of an offender serves three purposes, each of which is valid in its own right, and each of which is applicable in varying degrees to various crimes. First is the need to protect society. Citizens have a right to expect that, if they suffer at the hands of a criminal, that criminal, when convicted, will not, at least for the duration of his punishment, be able to repeat that suffering. Second is the need to establish a deterrent to others. The knowledge that the wages of crime is punishment will serve as deterrent only if the punishment is sufficiently punishing. Third is the element of plain, good, old-fashioned, Old Testament Biblical-style retribution. Any crime is a crime because society has deemed it so to be, and any person who commits a crime must realise that they have thus put themselves outside of society. Even the rare "victim-less" crime - sounding a car horn while stationary, for example, or smoking home-grown dope in private - while not requiring society to be protected, must still be punished, because it is, by consensus, a crime. No other reason is necessary.

The nature and extent of such punishment also demand examination. Incarceration fulfils the first need of punishment by parting the offender from those against whom he has offended. It will only function as a deterrent, however, if it is sufficiently unpleasant that those who may otherwise be tempted to offend would not wish to experience it. So, on being sentenced to, say, twelve years as a guest of Her Majesty, the criminal must expect to spend the next twelve years locked into a room eight feet on each side, with artificial lighting and no windows, fed on a nourishing but bland diet, performing repetitive, menial tasks not involving sharp objects, with no television, no radio, no newspapers, no socializing (he has, after all, shown himself to be incapable of it), no exercise, no conjugal visits, and none of the other "necessities" which the Howard League for Penal Reform and such like-minded bleeding hearts regard as the rights appropriate to those who have denied such rights to others. Consider how much more deterring this would be when compared with the "twelve year" sentence as it exists today, on the rare occasions that such a sentence is actually passed.

Some years ago, the state of California introduced the concept of "three strikes and you're out", an analogy taken from baseball implying that, after two infringements of the law, the third, no matter how minor, would lead to imprisonment. Imagine the shock experienced by a petty criminal when, having been found guilty of stealing a young boy's ice-cream, he was sentenced to eight years in the state penitentiary! Don't you love it when that happens?

I imagine that you are expecting me to touch on capital punishment, and I shall presently do so, but first, a word on the so-called "life sentence". I am fully aware that when a "lifer" is released from prison after, say, ten years, he is not, technically, a free man. He is released under certain conditions, any breach of which may lead to his being returned to prison, a situation which theoretically remains in force until his death. However, I maintain that life imprisonment should mean life imprisonment, that is, it should imply being in prison until death. So now I come to the death sentence. I believe that there are crimes so repugnant to any recognizably civilized society that they warrant the most extreme punishment. Further, I have a deep instinct that the murderer, the serial rapist, the child abuser, have, by their actions, forfeited their right to life. However, such instincts should, I believe, be tempered, firstly because there is always some risk that the offender did not commit the crime as specified (for example, he may have been suffering from some mental disorder which would remove the element of intent), and secondly because I do not believe that any person has the right - the moral right, if you will - to take the life of another. With this in mind, the appropriate punishment for those offences which warrant the "ultimate sanction" would appear to be an extreme form of life imprisonment; the offender would, on sentencing, be declared legally dead. He would be immediately confined to prison, never to leave. He would have no visitors, would not even see his warders. His eventual death would be marked only by his cell becoming available. American law would regard this as a "cruel and unusual punishment". You may too. I regard it as protection, deterrent, and retribution, each in appropriate measure.