Guardian-Land is a land of chaos and confusion

They live in Guardian-Land. This was the rebuke given to indulgent judges by an ex-police chief on LBC radio recently. 

He was talking about the case of an 18-year-old who threatened a motorist with a 12-inch zombie knife, only to receive a derisory suspended sentence, nine-month curfew and 150 hours of community service. 

Leaving aside the judge’s unfathomable decision to set a 7pm curfew for someone convicted of an offence committed at 5pm, this sentence is a scandal, especially when one considers the Home Secretary’s promise to get tough on knife crime.

It is also indicative of our elites’ morally perverse and reprehensible approach to dealing with offenders. The judge justified his leniency by citing the offender’s traumatic history. Apparently, some years ago he had been profoundly disturbed by the sight of his brother’s corpse. But does that justify his reckless behaviour? Is that really a mitigating circumstance? I mean, lots of people experience traumatic events. Life is indeed full of them. We don’t all kick cars and wave knives around though.

Such an inadequate punishment sends a truly appalling message to violent offenders. If you threaten or harm a law-abiding member of the public, you only have to tug on the judge’s heart strings with a hard luck story and, at worst, you’ll receive a community sentence. Where’s the deterrent?

The judges appear to view criminals as victims. And this is the crux of the matter. The legal establishment consists of liberal-left activists who see offenders as unwitting victims of an unjust society. They must therefore be molly-coddled and protected from punishment, not locked away. If anything, this extraordinary and perverse view of the world sees the victim as the de facto guilty party (at least partly responsible for the societal conditions that spawned the criminal in the first place) and, of course, vice versa.

It is therefore no surprise that we’ve seen such an astronomical rise in crime. And before you scream ‘cuts’ or even Kahn in the case of London, it’s not a recent phenomenon either. Crime’s been rising since the 1960s - when these views first became fashionable.

As a school teacher, I witness exactly the same approach on a daily basis. Bullies and violent pupils are treated as the real victims- victims of an uncaring society. They are thus permitted to torment their targets with impunity. The poor souls they abuse, in contrast, are left unprotected and, in some cases, even take the blame for the cruelty inflicted on them.

It really is shocking in its perversity. Morality has been upended by leftist elites. Criminals go unpunished and bullies unchecked. Guardian Land is indeed a land of chaos and confusion. And it’s going to get worse.