While I strongly believe that prison should help rehabilitate offenders, how should evil lifers like Rose West be treated when they are locked up?
West was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 10 young women and girls, including her 16-year-old daughter, her eight-year-old stepdaughter and her husband’s pregnant lover.
Her monster of a husband Fred escaped trial by committing suicide. Rose West is the UK’s most notorious woman serial killer.
Today’s Daily Mirror tells us that far from showing any remorse or living a life of deprivation, West has a very cosy set up which includes having a TV, DVD and stereo in her cell and the walls are plastered with posters of cats, while cards and books cover her shelves. She is also allowed a sewing machine and embroidery kit despite safety fears.
She can make daily outside phone calls to family and friends and is also allowed to order beauty items from Avon and Argos. She is also reported to have landed a plum jail job loading and unloading washing machines in the laundry room.
If all this is true, her life sounds far more comfortable than for thousands in our country who are living in poverty, particularly our pensioners. While I do not support the death penalty, surely a mass murderer’s prison sentence should reflect the seriousness of the case. The nation felt revulsion when hearing horrific details about the depravity of the Wests’ murderous spree, we should surely not forget that, and the deepest pity we felt for the West’s helpless victims.
I quite agree, ellee – sounds like she’s living in a five star hotel. I don’t think she should be rewarded for her murders.
I think the overriding consideration should be that she must not be in a position to commit these heinous crimes again.
Ellee, I find myself going yes, of course that’s not right. Then I start to think, how should she be kept? Allowed nothing? This is such a tricky subject. When should a prisonor get any perks?
The worst thing is that this treatment is not deterrent. The jails ‘don’t work’ (as the penal reformers continually tell us) becuase they are like this. Criminals aren’t scared to be sent to them. They’d think differently if they spent their time in bleak cells and spent their days breaking rocks.
You can’t deter true psycopaths with punishment, this is true – they quite often kill themselves anyway. But you CAN protect the public by removing them from circulation.
Where it goes wrong and becomes VERY dangerous indeed is when those who are of a criminal intent turn killer in emulation of psycopaths because they have nothing to fear from the penal system.
It’s cool to be a Baaad Ass Killer nowadays and soft sentencing (and the removal of capital punishment)makes it easier to be one. There’s a lot to be gained in kudos and little to lose on Britain’s mean streets through kicking somone’s head ‘like a football’.
I have no respect for politicians, senior police, prison guvernors and I always write to them as equals even though I have to fight my cap-doffing instincts. They have NOT earned my respect.
The treatment of Rose West speaks volumes about what they think of me, my feelings and how little they care about our security.
I agree with Richard. My first reaction was that it is scandalous that this dreadful, evil woman has comforts that many pensioners who have never hurt anyone do not, but if someone is in jail for life, what else can we do?
I think we should test drugs on them.
String her up.
Her life sounds a lot better than her victims’ lives now they are six feet down.
“The worst thing is that this treatment is not deterrent.”
Point taken, electro-kevin… However I get the feeling that someone as sick in the head as Fred and Rose West would have still committed their crimes, even if prisons were all chain gangs, bread-n-water, and internal cavity searches. But you’re right in that prison could/should certainly be more of a deterrent than it is at present.
As long as she’s never released, that’s the main thing.
James, I believe West will be released in 2019, by which time she will be 66 years old, even though Jack Straw as Home Secretary imposed a life tarrif so that life would mean life. This was amended by a Law Lords ruling.
Throw her in a rat infested pit with very little light and let basic food and water down once a day and let the evil bitch rot.
you know you all wanted to say that.
I have no compassion for monsters like her. She will never be rehabilitated, and it’s an outrage that she should live her days out in relative luxury and ease considering the horrors she perpetrated. The remainder of her life should be one of deprivation, despair, and a blessedly early death just to rid the world of her. The judicial system in Canada is just as moronic, by the way.
Always a hard one to answer,
what do we do with drunk or reckless drivers who kill someone on the road.
What do we do with someone who accidentally kills someone on the road.
As to what we do with ‘ruthless killers’ – not sure we are really that forgiving as a society. Some people seem to think that the electric chair or the lethal injection (a life for a life) is not punishment enough. Others think that life should mean life.
Whilst I am sure life in prison cannot be fun, even for psycopaths – it is hard to see how it atones for any murder, unless the murderer is truly sorry, they are still getting off lightly. I guess if like in america they were let loose in the yard with other psycopaths and murderers (and lived in fear for their lives everyday od their life, like in US prisons) it would be a more fitting punishment.
Of course murder in ‘conflict’ situations is another issue. Fortunately society has become less sectarian in most parts of the ‘modern’ world, and there is no longer dividing apartheid to justify political murder in our part of the ‘democratic’ world.
“James, I believe West will be released in 2019, by which time she will be 66 years old, even though Jack Straw as Home Secretary imposed a life tarrif so that life would mean life. This was amended by a Law Lords ruling.” (ellee)
I think you misunderstand the ruling. It was ruled that the Home Secretary extending the minimum tariff handed down by the judge was unlawful.
West will not automatically be released in 2019, but be eligible for parole. We will see the effect of this ruling either this year (Nilsen’s 25 year minimum tariff ends in November) or 2011 when Sutcliffe’s 30 year minimum tariff expires.
I do not believe that any parole board will want to face the backlash of public opinion that would result in releasing a serial killer – they will leave that to the European Court of Justice (who sooner or later probably will inflict one of these monsters on the public in the name of ‘human rights’)
Steven, this is what Wikipedia said, I get the impression from the last sentence that West could be released in 2019 if it is accurate:
“The Lord Chief Justice decided that West should spend at least 25 years in prison, but in July in 1997 Home Secretary Jack Straw subjected West to a whole life tariff. This was only the second instance of a British woman being condemned to die in prison, the other being Myra Hindley (who has since died). In the first two years of her sentence, West was held at the same prison as Hindley.
A November 2002 Law Lords’ ruling could see West released in 2019, by which time she will be 66 years old.”
Ellee: I feel the death penalty is in order. Here in the U.S. since the brutality of the Sharon Tate murders, the Manson Gang has similarly earned degrees in prison, married, fathered children and yet one can only imagine the victims’ final moments. If you take a life, you must forfeit the right to your own. But that’s just my opinion.
Rose does seem to be having a cosy sort of life that isn’t much different from living in her own apartment. She even has her meals cooked for her. And this is a psychpath with no sense of right and wrong.
Cheezy – you missed my point.
Deterrence is not for psycopaths – it is for people who would choose to emulate them.
To be called a ‘psycho’ is a badge of honour in many circles. To be prepared to murder or even to have served time for murder now has kudos and benefits the killer with a reputation to be feared.
This decline can be charted directly to the abolition of capital punishment immediately after which three police detectives were killed in Shephard’s Bush.
I think we need a period of extremism in this country to counter all the damage that has been done.
I think we do have to treat her humanely and I’m sure her life in prison is is no better nor worse than any other prisoner’s. She definitely should never get parole, but stranger things have happened.
I don’t think we have to treat her humanely. People are supposed to pay their debt to society in prison, they only way this woman, and other psycho murderers like her, can begin to repay their debt is if we are to use them for inhumane, but valuable, medical experiments. This way she might be used to save lives.
“use them for inhumane, but valuable, medical experiments”
The Sun in da house!
I’m amazed that she has friends to call and would like to know which books she reads.
Cheezy,
The Sun reflects public opinion much more than most judges or the EU do.
If we were to have a referedum with two options, option one being release her in 2019, option two being to use her for medical research, I think option two would be the clear winner.
It depends on what your priorities are, what you want the system to acheive.
Prison serves four purposes.
1. Punishment.
2. Deterrent.
3. Rehabilitation.
4. Public Protection.
5. Recompense for the crime.
Now, in this case we can take out 2 and 3. They are just not relevant here. She ain’t going to be rehabilitated, and potential nutters like this are not deterred by the consequences.
5 is not acheivable in this case.
So let’s look at he other two.
Now, as I have said many times before, Eye for Eye was MEANT to have ended with Jesus Christ. The whole punishment, in instances like this, is not appropriate in this day and age. Points 2,3 and 4 are the reasons why we need a justice system.
You can’t put the clock back. Nothing you do can bring back the lives of those she helped kill, even if you skin her alive and boil her in hot tar.
So what are we saying? That a LITTLE BIT of cruelty is OK? Just a little? So we can all comfort ourselves that at least she suffers a bit?
Imagine being inside her head. That must be a twisted place to be. Being Rose West must be suffering enough.
Public protection is the only relevant point her. Her life must be pure hell.
Keep her locked away for life, never let her out, but treat her like a human being.
It’s no argument at all to point out she didn’t behave like one. It’s true, she didn’t.
But we who judge her pride ourselves that WE ARE.
I’m saying cruelty with a purpose is OK. I’m not suggesting pointless medical experiments, just ones that are so risky that they could not be carried out on volunteers.
If we tested new drugs on psychopaths after they’d been tested on rats all those law-abiding people who were seriously damaged in East London the other year would not have had to go through what they did. Someone like Rose West or Dennis Nilsen would have suffered instead. As such they would be going some way towards payng a debt to society, working towards saving lives instead of taking life.
I should have added that renting them out to drugs companies would also help pay for the cost of keeping them. This may sound harsh but law-abiding tax-payers are still being refused cancer drugs on a cost basis. If this country made prisoners pay for their upkeep through forced labour we could use the money we were saving to save lives.
Of course it would neer get past the Human Rights Act to do what I am suggesting, but that’s a symptom of the age we live in now. Foreigners are allowed to land hijacked airliners on our soil and walk out of court free men, whereas conversely the government of the day cannot indefinately suspend parole for someone who has been given a LIFE sentence.
My response to my valued friend Ingsoc comment 24.
Simply being Rose West isn’t suffering enough, Ingsoc. She’s still here and clearly enjoys things far more than she deserves.
To be a truely repentant Christian to the point of forgiveness and acceptance into the Kingdom of Heaven requires two things:
– a belief in Jesus Christ and that his is the only way to the Truth.
– contrition SO extreme for wicked sins that death is infinitely better than life.
Rose West’s penchent for the finer things as exhibited in her cell shows that she is neither.
I don’t believe in God, or Christ or Mohammed, or Allah – it’s all tosh, so strike me down, and I’ll still be here next week to reply to you.
We need punishment that means Rose West IS sorry rather than just SAYING she is sorry
We need punishment that puts the shits up people who think it is clever to emulate the likes of Rose West.
We need punishment that restores a feeling of faith and retribution in the law-abiding population (the vast majority). Like it or not this is GOOD … this is HEALTHY
What we have in da YooKay right now is UNHEALTHY.
The law abiding majority feel that they are the ones in the wrong.