[ianch99]

Originally Posted by Chris

To be fair, the justice system does allow for people committing crimes like this, here and now, to be jailed indeterminately for the public safety. What it doesn't do is allow courts to convict people of things that weren't a crime when they did them, or to punish them with punishments that weren't available when they did them.

From time to time, especially when the law has recently changed, that throws up extremely unfortunate anomalies like this. But on the whole, it is more civilised not to shift the goalposts when it comes to crime and punishment. That way lies arbitrary and retrospective state victimisation.

Nevertheless, in this situation I can only hope that the local police, wherever this bloke ends up, are able to make up for the deficiencies that existed in the law prior to 2005, by watching him very closely indeed in 2014.

My concern is that with the drastic cuts in public services especially the Police, these are the sort of individuals that will slip through the net and be able to commit new crimes.