Axel Rudakubana

[Simon]

I flip flop a lot on the death penalty. On the one hand, absolutely it's easy to see how human nature can nurture the urge to not waste a penny more than we need to and drop kick this POS into the Thames wearing concrete slippers. Totally rational reaction to this most horrendous of crimes.

On the other hand I believe that killing is so wrong that no-one should do it, not even the state, if that makes sense.

I really don't think he'll last long inside though. In prison a child killer will be the very bottom rung of the ladder, and don't forget that even amongst inmates there'll be fathers and others disturbed enough by this cunt that they'll seek to enact their own kind of justice on him - particularly those with nothing to lose themselves....

There's no way he'll be alive in 52 years, maybe not even 52 months.

[jamcg]

I know that’s a common stereotype and I’m sure he’ll get a lot of grief, but have there actually been many cases of high risk prisoners getting killed by other prisoners?

If not killed, boiling sugar water threw in the face is a favourite in the prisons

[Zonda_]

I know that’s a common stereotype and I’m sure he’ll get a lot of grief, but have there actually been many cases of high risk prisoners getting killed by other prisoners?

If not killed, boiling sugar water threw in the face is a favourite in the prisons

And bizarrely, they all have their own kettles. They can also buy cans of tuna and anyone who's been careless opening one of them will know the lids are very effective at cutting flesh!

[tim]

Looks like a batshit lunatic.
Is brown.
Has to be a muslim immigrant.

That seems to be about as far as the pitch-fork crowd want to look. I don't believe any amount of information released earlier would have changed a thing in the world view of the vast majority of people frothing at the mouth over this.

Killing him won't solve anything. Paying better attention to folks who are suffering certainly might. So we should do that.

[Beany]

Yes, but actually increasing mental health monitoring and support (which appears to be the real key here) is expensive and is for Softy Libs, which won't work well with our majority right wing press even, if it were fully funded and proven to reduce incidents like this and be of a major benefit to the country as a whole - they'd still pillory it as wOkE MaDnEsS and dribbling fuckwits would lap it up.

So basically, nothing will change.

[tim]

Government policy and spending isn't controlled by the press, unless your tinfoil is weapons grade.

[dinny_g]

The sorts of people who would do this are unlikely to seek out help themselves. The system relies on others reporting concerns which, similar to Family Services, can be abused and balancing individual human rights with efficient investigations can be awful for the individual.

Think about it - you get a knock on the door one evening and outside are 2 cops and a social worker, saying a report has been made and concerns raised - perhaps because you posted on a social media board that someone deserves to die - therefore, YOU might do it. To be effective, social services can't just have a quick chat and decide to believe you. Because sociopaths are great at lying. They have to investigate until they are certain you're no risk. This could be several months of monitoring, the whole time with sectioning or prison a possible outcome.

I mean how would any of us prove we aren't mad if we had to ?

The UK Society is 68 million strong and thankfully these incidents, while horrific, are very rare. You can't prevent every crime and to shift society in the direction of Big Brother in an attempt to try is a dangerous idea IMO.

[GG.]

The sorts of people who would do this are unlikely to seek out help themselves. The system relies on others reporting concerns which, similar to Family Services, can be abused and balancing individual human rights with efficient investigations can be awful for the individual.

Think about it - you get a knock on the door one evening and outside are 2 cops and a social worker, saying a report has been made and concerns raised - perhaps because you posted on a social media board that someone deserves to die - therefore, YOU might do it. To be effective, social services can't just have a quick chat and decide to believe you. Because sociopaths are great at lying. They have to investigate until they are certain you're no risk. This could be several months of monitoring, the whole time with sectioning or prison a possible outcome.

I mean how would any of us prove we aren't mad if we had to ?

The UK Society is 68 million strong and thankfully these incidents, while horrific, are very rare. You can't prevent every crime and to shift society in the direction of Big Brother in an attempt to try is a dangerous idea IMO.

You're right that this has to be dealt with sensibly but at the moment there is clearly no effective intervention whatsoever. For someone that has been expelled from school for taking in knives on multiple occasions and has demonstrated violent tendencies, there should be significant surveillance of their activities and at a certain point, they need to be taken out of wider society. Frequent carrying of knives into school and assaulting other pupils should have resulted in that but didn't. Clearly there was a record of the call to Childline where he said he wanted to kill people - why were these things not connected and not acted upon? I think most people would admit that the system doesn't work and this was a tragic example of how - we don't want to go back to Victorian style asylums but there must be a middle ground.

ETA: The BBC has a good rundown of his interaction with social services. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78w7nlwz9po

Quite incredible that they quote: "At the time of the attack, social care professionals were assessing whether the then-17-year-old needed to be offered additional care to manage his transition to adulthood." I think given the prolific issues and knife carrying at that point the additional care needed is to be assessed whether he should be inside a secure institution.

[tim]

I think you underestimate how much of this (taking knives in etc) goes on in a lot of schools. You'd never keep up with it if you had to put a full on surveillance into all of them.

[GG.]

Part of the solution is simply enforcement of the law. Carrying a bladed weapon in public is a criminal offence - kids taking knives into school without an excuse (which is already recognised in the legislation) should without fail end up in court and be given (at least a short) mandatory custodial sentence in a young offenders institution. 3 months for the first offence, 6 months for the second and so on. No ifs, no buts.

People will then squeal and say you'd be locking up thousands of kids but you know what... they aren't stupid. As soon as you actually starting enforcing the law behaviour will change. The crunch point is that yes, it will probably involve giving a few hundred of the first bunch to be caught custodial sentences and guess what, there is no room for them. So funding the system so there is adequate capacity to enforce the law is step one.

[Rich B]

Part of the solution is simply enforcement of the law. Carrying a bladed weapon in public is a criminal offence - kids taking knives into school without an excuse (which is already recognised in the legislation) should without fail end up in court and be given (at least a short) mandatory custodial sentence in a young offenders institution. 3 months for the first offence, 6 months for the second and so on. No ifs, no buts.

People will then squeal and say you'd be locking up thousands of kids but you know what... they aren't stupid. As soon as you actually starting enforcing the law behaviour will change. The crunch point is that yes, it will probably involve giving a few hundred of the first bunch to be caught custodial sentences and guess what, there is no room for them. So funding the system so there is adequate capacity to enforce the law is step one.

Cool, so we’re paying more tax and doing it yeah?

[GG.]

Maybe we should do that over building tunnels for bats along the HS2 line - that's your first £100m of funding and I'm sure I can find many more. Our priorities are so far out of whack it is untrue.

We're well into the law of diminishing returns with raising tax beyond its current level so that isn't the solution.

[ZedLeg]

I’m sure nothing could go wrong with criminally institutionalising loads of kids instead of trying to figure out why they feel like they needed to carry a knife.

[GG.]

They feel like they need to carry a knife because of the dangerous environment they live in on account of lots of kids carrying knives. Its a vicious cycle and there needs to be an intervention that is not focused on scapegoating Amazon for a failure of the government to enforce the law.

[Gavster]

The way I see it is that someone like Axel is a severe case and probably needed to be institutionalised either way, by sectioning or by this exceptionally violent way.

[GG.]

That is true and even if you ramped well, well down from my zero tolerance suggestion and you know, just incarcerated individuals that had carried knives on multiple occasions and clearly expressed a desire to murder, you would have stopped this.

Many people in charge of the departments that failed to do so should be replaced with immediate effect.

[Gavster]

Also, psychopaths don't respond to therapy.

ETA: If Axel is one or not, I don't know.

[dinny_g]

Carrying a bladed weapon in public is a criminal offence - kids taking knives into school without an excuse (which is already recognised in the legislation) should without fail end up in court and be given (at least a short) mandatory custodial sentence in a young offenders institution. 3 months for the first offence, 6 months for the second and so on. No ifs, no buts.

2 ways to enforce this.

1. Metal Detectors in Schools

or

2. "Random" searches - and we all know why that wouldn't be allowed

Besides, kids stash knives these days. I've found one a few years ago - stashed in a tree. I was taking a leak on a run and there it was. I reported it Police via 112. Gangs have a network of stashed weapons so they never have to carry but are never more than a few hundred yards from one.

I’m sure nothing could go wrong with criminally institutionalising loads of kids instead of trying to figure out why they feel like they needed to carry a knife.

We all know why they feel the need to carry one - solving all of society's problems to remove that reason is a far bigger task

[ZedLeg]

Why do they need to carry one then middle aged conservative experts on the youth?

[dinny_g]

Because everyone else is carrying one.

(Father of an 18 year old who's very engaged in what it takes to keep a young man, just starting out in life, safe)