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1

The UK has a serious problem with alcohol abuse.

Posted by Mike | March 27, 2008 12:40 PM
2

That, plus it is sometimes hard to tell male and female goths alike ...

Posted by Will in Seattle | March 27, 2008 12:44 PM
3

They should sentence that shitbag to death by peach schnapps overdose. That would be a fitting demise.

Posted by oljb | March 27, 2008 12:47 PM
4

Poor girl.

Posted by Ivory | March 27, 2008 12:48 PM
5

Jesus. Even I won't say something deliciously horrible here.

Posted by Mr. Poe | March 27, 2008 12:49 PM
6
Posted by BIlly | March 27, 2008 12:55 PM
7

Billy beat me to it. Gangs of hoodlums are hunting down and beating emos in several large Mexican cities.

Posted by Fnarf | March 27, 2008 1:00 PM
8

A death sentence would be too forgiving and kind a penalty for these living pieces of shit. Torture, as a formal punishment, needs to be legalized, because terrible crimes have gotten more common in recent years, and the current system really does little to suitably punish offenders. We need a justice system that strikes enough fear into people to dissuade them from doing shit like beating someone to death because they dress like goths. Nuturing methods clearly don't work.

Posted by Gomez | March 27, 2008 1:02 PM
9

Who the fuck goes out goth bashing?!? People that can't stand the idea of people wearing all black? And I didn't even know there was such a thing as an emo, much less a backlash against them. In Mexico...

Posted by Mike in MO | March 27, 2008 1:07 PM
10

so emo is just another word for painfully gay japanese pop star boys? cause thats what they all look like.

Posted by Bellevue Ave | March 27, 2008 1:08 PM
11

#8, "Torture, as a formal punishment, needs to be legalized"

Ok. Good luck writing that new constitution and getting it ratified.

Posted by w7ngman | March 27, 2008 1:13 PM
12

woah, these stories are ridiculous. not that i can tell some of those punks from emos anyways, and the punk they interviewed looked more like a head-banger to me. reminds me of SLC punk.

Posted by infrequent | March 27, 2008 1:16 PM
13

Hear, hear, Comrade Gomez! What we need in this country is swift, brutal justice! Comrade Stalin and Chairman Mao would have known how to deal with those hooligans! Especially if they were political dissidents!

What a stupid thing to write. The government should never, ever have the authority to torture anyone for any reason. The Justice System is not an instrument of vengeance, nor should it be.

Posted by povertyrich | March 27, 2008 1:21 PM
14

#8, "Torture, as a formal punishment, needs to be legalized"

#11:Ok. Good luck writing that new constitution and getting it ratified.

It doesn't need to be in the constitution. Torture is euphemismized as "advanced interrogation techniques" and the feds have proven that the constitution is worth jack and squat.

Posted by mongrel | March 27, 2008 1:23 PM
15

The emos I can sort of understand, but goth bashing? That's just stupid and I hope they throw the book at the kid who killed her.

JOKE:
Q: What's the best thing about emo cake?
A: It cuts itself.

Posted by Hernandez | March 27, 2008 1:25 PM
16

I agree, the justice system should never torture people to death. Some individual citizen of the UK, however, should kindly take it upon themselves to keep an eye on
these boys if any of them ever get out of jail and take a few months chopping bits off of them.

You could even keep them alive by feeding the bits back to them.

Not joking. People like this make me want to douse the world in gasoline.

Posted by Billy Nilly | March 27, 2008 1:26 PM
17

Christ wept.

Posted by Tiktok | March 27, 2008 1:32 PM
18

why punish the world for what a few ants do in the U.K.?

Posted by Bellevue Ave | March 27, 2008 1:37 PM
19

Seems like England has had a problem with gangs of drunk young louts bashing "others" since the dawn of time. It's the weird flip side to their otherwise cheerful, happy-go-lucky culture.

Posted by Big Sven | March 27, 2008 1:41 PM
20

@15 What can you understand about mobs out to kill people for how they dress? What rationale makes sense?

Posted by NaFun | March 27, 2008 1:57 PM
21

"happy go lucky" is not the phrase that comes to mind when i think of england. i remember pale sickly guys and foul-mouthed women, overhearing screaming matches on the streets after the pubs closed, and walking around rain-diluted vomit on the sidewalk.
i like the peach schnapps suggestion.

Posted by pretentious | March 27, 2008 1:58 PM
22

@ 20. I was in London for the 2005 film fest when gay bartender David Morley was beaten to death on the South Bank. It's a bustling area--London Eye, Tate Modern, etc.--even late at night. Just a few hours before, I had been watching a movie in the same vicinity. The next day, there were bundles of flowers where he died. I passed that area often while I was in the city. Depressed me every time.

Posted by Kathy Fennessy | March 27, 2008 2:21 PM
23

#8, "Torture, as a formal punishment, needs to be legalized"

#11, "Ok. Good luck writing that new constitution and getting it ratified."

#14, "It doesn't need to be in the constitution. Torture is euphemismized as "advanced interrogation techniques" and the feds have proven that the constitution is worth jack and squat."

Right, because if the executive does it, that makes it legal. Who are you, Richard Nixon?

I'm pretty sure the original poster meant legal as in, "The constitution and federal statutes define what is legal" and not as in, "John Yoo is a legal scholar."

Posted by w7ngman | March 27, 2008 2:23 PM
24

LOL liberals. You wouldn't hurt a fly, and I think that and your time-out approach to justice explains a lot about why this country's where it is with crime.

Posted by Gomez | March 27, 2008 2:23 PM
25

Whoops, that was supposed to be "@ 19." The new formatting threw me off.

Posted by Kathy Fennessy | March 27, 2008 2:30 PM
26

Great. And six-year-olds are getting into "ultimate fighting" - man and I thought dodgeball was rough on me:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004309593_apultimatefightingkids.html

Posted by Glad I'm outta school | March 27, 2008 2:42 PM
27

#24, you're absolutely right. Prison is a uniquely liberal concept. Damn libruls hijacked the U.S. criminal justice system and steered it away from the good ol' days when we used to draw and quarter people, pull out fingernails, chop off hands, and perform other such wildly effective deterrents.

Maybe I am naive, but I fail to see how nutjobs like yourself could hold power through legal means long enough to stack the Supreme Court into reinterpreting "cruel and unusual punishment" to exclude all of the delightfully nasty torture techniques to which you seem to enjoy jerking off.

You must lay in your bed at night seething about how the Bill of Rights has a liberal bias.

Posted by w7ngman | March 27, 2008 3:09 PM
28

#8. I agree that violent criminals should face violent consequences. In this country, they do. It's called "prison". Ever see what County Lockups look like? How about Federal maximum security prisons? It's more than just "time out", and it's not all cornholin'. There are constant fights, random beatings, stabbings, etc. The Mexican gangs that run the California prison system are much more savage than a towelhead-hatin' redneck in the CIA.

With shows like "Oz", movies like Shawshank, and a steady stream of news stories about prison life, you would think that people would know that prison might not just be time alone in a cell.

What more can we do to let potential criminals know what's in store for them? Nothing, because they don't care.

Posted by Sir Vic | March 27, 2008 3:18 PM
29

As crass as it sounds, here's what I'm getting at: the constitution may call for freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. At the same time, crime itself has grown more cruel and more unusual, and the law has no teeth to accordingly punish such cruel and unusual behavior, with people instead trying to make the legal system softer, gentler... and then wondering why it doesn't rehabilitate criminals, as they game the system, fool officials into believing they're rehabilitated, and then go out and hurt people all over again. You're getting played not just by criminals, but by a fractured, toothless system of justice that's so scared to punish criminals that when in doubt, it lets them off the hook for their crimes.

Posted by Gomez | March 27, 2008 3:33 PM
30

@24
Gomez,

That's very generous of you to credit liberals with the 15+ year decline in the national crime rate that we've experienced recently.

Posted by Bison | March 27, 2008 3:34 PM
31

Two or three terrible prisons in California or Georgia don't embody every prison system in the country. Prison's no paradise, but hardly everyone in the can faces a life like that. A couple of acquaintances in Nevada and Washington have served time in the state pen, and their experience was nothing like that.

Posted by Gomez | March 27, 2008 3:37 PM
32

30. Decline in REPORTED crimes. Police depts are more and more strapped, and more and more crimes are going unreported. And governments like it that way, because it allows them to boast about falling crime numbers.

Posted by Gomez | March 27, 2008 3:39 PM
33

We prefer to punish crime instead of prevent the conditions that lead to crime. We prefer to vilify "criminals" so they become another "other." As an "other" they deserve treatment we cannot imagine just when are treated in similar ways. 'Round and 'round we go. WEEEEEEEE!

Umm...the idea that criminal acts have become more gruesome over time is just plain counter to historical evidence.

Posted by Forgiveness | March 27, 2008 4:41 PM
34

This goes to show how, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away. Meanwhile, many of our neighbors in Seattle advocate for legalizing underage drinking. I'm not comfortable with what those add up to.

Posted by Guy | March 27, 2008 5:05 PM
35

Still sounds like a jolly place to me. I didn't see any 15+ round semiauto Glocks being used, no backpack of spare ammo, only one person died and the docs had two weeks to try to save them... what a low body count. Surely, the English must be suffering under the heel of an oppressive state! Imagine the same four drunken yoyos with AK's with 30 round clips..

Fists and boots. We should be so lucky.

Posted by CP | March 27, 2008 9:24 PM
36

CP: Imagine Sophie or a bystander with that semiauto Glock. She'd be alive, and her boyfriend unmaimed.

If you saw this scenario happening here, if you were the bystander who called the police but knew they wouldn't be here till too late, and someone is being killed right in front of you: what would you do?

Posted by Guy | March 27, 2008 11:05 PM
37

@ 13 wrote: "The Justice System is not an instrument of vengeance, nor should it be. "

First, I'm not advocating torture, so let's get that out of the way. Gomez is crazy.

But I'd argue that the justice system is (or should be) a formal, organized system for exacting revenge that is FAIR. After all, if you look up "revenge" or "vengeance" in the dictionary it just says something like "inflicting punishment in return for injury."

That covers all kinds of acts. Some of them can be "just" (i.e. publicly accusing and embarrassing the guy who raped you) and some unjust (i.e. beating the shit out of your girlfriend because she broke up with you). Both of these are acts of vengeance, but one is reasonable and one is not.

The justice system exists to address the natural punitive impulse we have when we feel we have been wronged, but it takes out the PERSONAL and often over-reactive element of vengeance by having a jury, an impartial judge passing the sentence instead of the plaintiff, blah blah.

At least, that's the idea. I think any discussion of justice as a "rehabilitative" agent without the concept of punishment coming first is bound to miss the mark. Vengeance is important to people, and we need to have a system that gives it to them in a fair, dignified manner.

Posted by Yeek | March 28, 2008 5:36 AM
38

Kathy@25: Thanks. Hmm- maybe London is the problem. I spent most of my time over there in the north and up in rural Scotland.

Posted by Big Sven | March 28, 2008 8:53 AM
39

Okay, torture IS too strong. Corporal punishment and hard labor. 20 years sitting in a room and getting to use the prison facilities when you're allowed isn't exactly hammering home a message.

Posted by Gomez | March 28, 2008 9:18 AM
40

33. You cannot prevent nearly half of the circumstances that have shown to produce crime. You'd have to eliminate poverty and corruption almost completely to make a dent. It's just not going to happen.

The concept of rehabilitation is a band aid for the problem, and this nation has multiple stab wounds.

Posted by Gomez | March 28, 2008 9:22 AM

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